


Beyond the End, There is a Season

by TigerLilyNoh



Series: Beyond the End, There is a Season [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adult Content, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse (Supernatural), Angels, Angst, Cambion, Croatoan Virus (Supernatural), Croats (Supernatural), Demons, Depression, Episode: s02e09 Croatoan, Episode: s05e04 The End, F/M, Love, Minor Jo Harvelle/Dean Winchester, Nephilim, Possession, Post-Apocalypse, Pregnancy, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Sam Winchester-centric, Sexual Content, Slow Build, father!Sam, good!ruby, mention of abortion, mention of infanticide, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 08:55:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 24
Words: 107,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17619365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLilyNoh/pseuds/TigerLilyNoh
Summary: Sam wakes up to discover that he’s just spent the last two years as Lucifer’s vessel.  During that time, the Croatoan virus has ravaged the world just as much as the armies of Heaven and Hell.  Suddenly free of his captor, he’s dismayed to find that his rescuer is none other than a resurrected Ruby.  Feelings of betrayal and a mountain of trust issues must take a backseat as they have to work together to survive in the post-apocalyptic world—coping with the fall of civilization, enduring the elements, evading Croats, and running from the forces of both Lucifer and Michael—in order to protect Lucifer’s newborn daughter.  Their daughter.





	1. Late Winter: Rude Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my artist in this big bang ( @jaredcortese on Tumblr). The artwork is haunting and beautiful. 
> 
> Thank you a million times over to my two betas, mpanighetti and lastarael. They both put in long hours and kept me sane. Their help was invaluable and I couldn't have done this without them.

Lucifer stood in the lavish library of his estate.  The ornately carved bookcases ascended two stories on three sides of the room, leaving the fourth to contain what used to be tall stained glass windows overlooking a rose garden.  One of his first acts upon claiming the mansion had been to destroy those decorative windows. Their depiction of his brothers had been offensive on many levels, not the least of which was the creator’s vanity and how it obscured the garden below.  

The thousands of old books had been the next casualty.  They contained the collective knowledge of countless humans; it was such a waste of trees.  Rather than burning them, he had taken to strolling about the library, plucking them at random, then skimming through the pages.  He didn’t read them for their ‘truth.’ He read them to study his enemy and to observe the associations it triggered in Sam’s consciousness.  As lowly as the chore felt at times, his captive audience was too much of a resource to ignore. When he was done with a book, he would strip the words from the pages, leaving the empty vessel as a testament to his cause.  Someday he’d strike the last human word from the Earth.

Amon, an archdemon of the Second Order of Hell, cautiously entered the library.  He was wearing some brutish-looking man with pasty white skin, a thick brow, balding head, and sullen eyes.  His clothes were newly made—a black suit adorned because he had the honor of being in his master’s presence. The demon hesitated slightly just inside the wooden double doors.  Beyond him, a woman’s screams faintly echoed down the mansion’s marble hallways.

“Sir, your troops in Azul have reported success in their mission.  There weren’t any survivors.”

The archangel didn’t bother asking about their losses.  The deaths of demons were unimportant and his few hundred loyal siblings had been assigned to other tasks.

“How many men, women, and children?”

“The exact figures are still being calculated,” Amon answered.  “But the last estimate is approximately fifteen thousand men, twelve thousand women, and three thousand children.”

Lucifer scowled at the numbers.  That wasn’t consistent with the normal demographics of a group of civilians.  There were too many men and not enough children.

He could feel Sam stirring in the depths of their shared mind.  The thought of hunting children pained the consciousness of his vessel.  Luckily, Sam’s feelings were no more impactful in the world than those of the long dead.  Lucifer took a moment to admire his persistence, feeble as it was. In the two years that they’d shared a body Sam hadn’t yet faded to nothingness.

“Humans are profoundly flawed and weak.  They are blight and vermin. But we would be amiss if we forgot that such faults reflect on their persistence.  Survival and proliferation is half of what makes pestilent creatures like them such a nuisance.” Lucifer rested his hands on a mahogany banister, which cracked quietly at his chilling touch.  “They’re hiding children out there somewhere. I want them found and killed. This generation will be the last.”

Amon hastily nodded, nearly going so far as to bow, but stopped just short.  Being the animal that he was, he probably had a primal fear of exposing the back of his neck to something more powerful than himself.  Worried that his mistaken optimism might be met with punishment, he backed away towards the door, then replied, “Yes, sir. I’ll inform command right away.”

Before the underling could retreat Lucifer raised a finger and thoughtfully touched his lower lip.  “Wait.” He listened to the woman's screams for a few seconds. Sweat visibly beaded on Amon’s forehead as the moment lingered, then he continued.  “I want examples made. I need thoroughness from my troops. If the next mission goes so poorly that it pulls me away I will be very disappointed.” The last few words were little more than a menacing hiss.

Amon’s head trembled more than nodded.  “Of course, sir. You won’t be disturbed, sir.”

As the demon moved to make his retreat the screaming stopped.  He froze and turned to look down the hallway, concerned about what the silence might mean.  Lucifer wasn’t worried. In fact, a thin smile spread across his lips at the sound of approaching footsteps.

Nakir entered the library.  Her vessel had rich, tawny skin, a slender frame, and loose, frizzy black hair that reached her shoulders.  Unlike nearly all of the other angels, her eyes were almost solid black but for a small amount of white in the very corners, giving her more of a demonic appearance than angelic.  She wore an elegant white suit with a pencil skirt, but the entire ensemble was stained with fresh blood. Her mouth curled into a grin and her tongue nearly glowed with a flickering flame as she spoke.  

“Brother, she’s here.”

* * *

Sam woke up lying on a mattress that was in the back of a station wagon.  He rolled over and tried to lift himself up, but he collapsed. His head was spinning.  The mild hum of the car was enough to make him nauseous. His insides felt like they were recovering from a terrible case of freezer burn.  He tried to grab onto anything to help stabilize him, to ground him, but his arms were too weak.

“Try not to move,” a vaguely familiar female voice told him.  “You’ve been through a lot.”

He leaned his head back to see the silhouette of a dark-haired woman driving.  Unable to summon enough strength to do much at all, he just lay back down and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.  He was wearing a white dress shirt, but no tie or jacket. His pants were also white, though there was a significant amount of dirt on them.  It looked like he’d been dragged somewhere. He had no idea how he’d gotten there—wherever _there_ was.

“I-I don’t… I don’t remember.”  Sam’s voice was hoarse. “What happened?”

After several seconds the woman asked, “Do you remember Lucifer?”

“Lucifer….”  Sam’s mind felt like it’d been filled with static and his limbs had gone numb.  Something had happened. The picture started creeping back into his head. “He was out.  We were fighting him. He was gonna destroy….” His chest felt tight. “I-I said yes.”

The woman pulled over to the side of the highway and turned off the car.  After taking a moment to collect herself she told him, “It’s been almost two years since then.”

Years.  It was real, not some horrid nightmare, and it’d been that way for longer than he’d guessed.  Sam covered his face in a futile attempt to hide the tears that began coursing down his cheeks.  

His instincts immediately told him to find Dean, to find the security of his family, but the thought had barely formed before it began collapsing under the reality of the situation.  They hadn’t spoken in almost three years prior to him becoming possessed. There had been a falling out: partially Sam’s doing when he had quit hunting after releasing Lucifer and partially Dean’s doing when the elder Winchester had decided that they couldn’t risk being together.  They were both vessels, each destined to carry an archangel, and together they would destroy the world.

Dean had adopted the tactic of keeping the two pieces of kindling far apart.  Unfortunately, Sam had always felt that their isolation had left them each more volatile—  At least Sam had been vulnerable, both in terms of physical safety and emotional well-being.  And in a battle of wills, trying to hold out against that incredible pressure on him, one’s emotional well-being had turned out to be vital.

But Dean had stopped returning his calls.  Castiel and Bobby wouldn’t tell Sam where he was—not that Sam saw either of them very often.  It wasn’t that they had chosen Dean’s side over his. It was more that it had been painful to see them, for every time they spoke to have them keep information from him.  Even if it was in an attempt to respect Dean’s wishes, it still hurt. Then there was the way they had looked at him….

Sam tried to focus on breathing, to calm himself down so that he could remember what had happened to Dean.  When things had started really falling apart word had reached Sam that Dean was organizing hunters into a militia of sorts.  It had made sense to Sam at the time despite him never actually having been explicitly let into the fold. Dean had always fallen on the soldier-end of the hunter spectrum.  Him running a combat-focused resistance had been a bit of gossip that Sam could believe. It was only after he’d become possessed by Lucifer that the existence of such a group had been confirmed.

Dean had been a wanted man before, but with Lucifer in his true vessel the hunt had truly turned fierce.  Lucifer had even spent a great deal of time pursuing Dean himself. They’d never found him, though Sam’s hands had personally torn the hearts from dozens of Dean’s friends and allies.  With each murder, his victims’ expressions had gradually turned from fear to loathing. Now, after three years of silence and two years of the hunt, Sam had no doubt that his face was the last thing Dean wanted to see.

After taking a few minutes to silently process that information he quietly asked the woman, “How am I free?”

“A well-timed, high-powered divine banishment spell and a whole shitload of protection magic.”  Without looking back, she pointed over her shoulder to the ceiling of the station wagon. In the dim light he could see the faint image of an elaborate ward painted in a dark liquid.  “When Lucifer was distracted, I cast a spell that knocked him out of you and temporarily stunned him along with his entourage. Then I grabbed you and hauled ass. It’s been three days.”

“Thank you.  I don’t know how to thank you.”  When she didn’t react, he asked, “Do I know you?”

She turned partially around in her seat to face him.  It was Ruby. Somehow she was alive and in the vessel she’d been wearing when he’d helped kill her.

He tried to sit up to confront her, but when he lifted his head up higher he saw that she was holding something.  In her arms was a little bundle that she was clutching to her chest. The front of her white linen dress was pulled down on one side, revealing her left breast.  She was breastfeeding a small newborn.

Sam stared at her, stunned to see her in such an uncharacteristic situation.  He watched her for a long while before asking, “What—whose baby is that?”

“Mine,” she answered defensively.

As far as he knew, it was almost unheard of for demons to have children.  He’d heard rumors of some little boy with immense power that had been deemed the Antichrist (a flexible title, he'd gathered), who'd mysteriously disappeared without a trace before Lucifer's forces had managed to collect him, but that was it as far as he could recall.  Yet, as unnerving as it was to potentially be finding out about some half-demon, another unpleasant thought came to his mind: babies usually had two parents.

His stomach knotted as he asked, “And?”

“It depends on who you ask.”  She didn’t look at him in a particularly ominous move.  “Lucifer would say she’s his.”

He managed to prop himself up on his elbow to get a better look at the baby.  It had light skin and a significant patch of medium brown hair. The baby was his—  Ruby had said ‘she.’

“I… I have a daughter?”

Ruby looked up to watch him cautiously.  “I think that kinda depends on you.”

“Give her to me,” he nearly demanded.

“No.  You look like a fucking breeze would knock you over.”  She stared him down. “What the fuck are you gonna do? Are you really gonna fight me, throw me out of this car, and ditch me?”

“It’s crossed my mind,” he admitted.

“How’re you gonna feed a newborn?” Ruby asked him in an aggressive tone.  “I don’t know if you can remember the last two years, but the world has kinda gone to shit.  Good luck finding some baby formula at the fucking grocery store. If you want her, you need me.  And if you don’t want her, then I’m fine leaving your ass here.”

He pursed his lips.  He wasn’t sure how to feel about the baby.  That news was too fresh for him to process, but if she really was his daughter he wasn’t about to let Ruby take her away from him.

Anyway, he didn’t know enough about what was going on to just step out into the night and walk in a random direction.  He didn’t know where to go or if anyone else he knew was still alive. He had a vague recollection that Dean might still be alive, or at least that Lucifer’s side hadn’t killed him, but that was hardly enough information to go off of.

Sam stared at the newborn for several seconds.  She was rather small—‘newborn’ was right. “How old is she?” he asked quietly.

“Three days.”

She had escaped with him immediately before or after giving birth.  With her it could’ve been either. He wouldn’t have put anything past Ruby.  The woman was as capable as she was dangerous. The dark liquid of the warding above him was likely blood.  She’d broken out of Lucifer’s estate somehow, stolen a car, and probably killed someone to cover their tracks.  Well, she’d probably killed more than one person on her way out to protect herself. It was just who she was: an opportunist.  She would lie, cheat, steal, and murder to get an inch ahead.

He should fucking know.  The memory of her gleefully watching as Lucifer was freed made his stomach turn sour.  Normally he would try not to antagonize someone while he was still so vulnerable, but he couldn’t help it.  She’d ruined his life.

“You tricked me,” he said, getting straight to the elephant in the room.  “You got me addicted to demon blood, then used me to start the Apocalypse.”

“You helped kill me,” she countered.

“You don’t get to say it’s all even.”

“Of course it isn’t even.”  Ruby looked at him like he was an idiot.  “But what the fuck do you want from me?”

“I want nothing to do with you.”

“Well, too bad.  What else do you want?”

He huffed a bit, offended that she was just blowing him off.  She’d put him through hell and that fucking meant something.

“After what you did, I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust you,” Sam told her.

“I don’t care if you trust me.  You need me,” she replied curtly.  “Are we done?”

He sure as hell wasn’t done.  “Why’d you do it?”

“Why did I start working with Lilith or why did I keep going along with it?”

Her clarifying question struck him as surprisingly telling.  Something had changed for her part way through her deception.

“Both,” he huffed.

“As for how I got started, I needed to get out of Hell.  It’s, well—“ Her mouth opened and closed a couple times trying to find a good way to articulate it.  “There aren’t even words. Lilith said she could get me onto Earth if I helped her out. She said that once Lucifer was free we—demons—would be able to stay on Earth.  It was my way off of the rack and all I had to do was help some psychic kid become powerful.”

“You were willing to destroy the world to save your own ass?”

“Demon, remember.”  She shrugged her shoulders at him as if to say that was justification enough.  “Anyway, the world never seemed to go out of its way to do anything nice for me.”

Ruby hadn’t ever really told him much about herself except that she had been a witch.  Beyond that she was something of a mystery to be speculated upon. Her sharp, venomous personality had always hinted at an intelligent woman that had grown thorns somewhere along the way, but it’d always been hard to know whether that was some characteristic of her, the woman, or whether that was typical of any person that had been pressed through the meat grinder of Hell and come out a demon.

“And then once we got further along everything started to go sideways,” she continued her explanation.  “Word was that angels were walking the Earth. It wasn’t just getting Azazel’s favorite child to free the big boss anymore.  It was suddenly war and the writing was on the wall. It was us or them—“

“So to save yourself you just threw the world to a monster?” he asked, still struggling to process how someone could make that decision—how _she’d_ been able to make that decision.  His voice nearly broke as he added, “You threw me to a monster.”

Her mouth wavered slightly as she stopped herself from saying something impulsive.  After taking a couple of seconds to compose her thoughts she replied, “He was supposed to fight Michael and after he won he wouldn’t need you anymore.  Angels only need vessels when they’re doing stuff on Earth. He was supposed to let you go after we were safe. But Michael never came and Lucifer just kept using you….  He didn’t try to end it. He was just playing with us.”

Sam knew better than anyone Lucifer’s nearly-sadistic mind.  The archangel didn’t relish the suffering of others for the pure joy of it like Alastair or some of the other lieutenants.  Instead he desired control, and instilling lessons through making examples of people had been a tried and true method. If he couldn’t gain control of the world through a conflict with Michael, he would happily take it one blood-soaked brick at a time.

Reflecting on Lucifer’s motivates stirred something in Sam.  At first he didn’t understand what was happening. He felt dizzy and confused.  Trying to figure out how he had that sort of intuition reminded him of standing on the edge of a bottomless pit and looking into the void.  All the questions of how did he know what he knew was giving him some sort of mental vertigo. The sights, sounds, smells, the touch, and taste of random brief moments seemed to slip out from the abyss to assault his consciousness.  He gently held his head.

“You broken?” Ruby asked.

“Fuck you,” he reflexively replied only to realize that her suggestion wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility.  After a moment of hesitation he admitted, “It’s confusing, missing time and just… not knowing things.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Saying yes—no, that’s not right.”  Sam furrowed his brow as he started getting a grasp on some of the snippets he had seen.  A few of them were coming together in his mind to form something like memories. “There are glimpses, bits from when he was in control.”

Sam clenched his eyes as several dozen memories were illuminated in the dark haze that had been his mind while possessed.  Two years. He was largely missing what had undoubtedly been the most horrific and significant years of his life—probably of human history.  The whole world had changed while he was away… because he was away. Even the impossible may have come to pass while he wasn’t looking. Hell, he had to look no further than Ruby sitting in the car to see that.

He was about to ask how she was even alive, but a few memories clicked into place, revealing some of the tale.  Lucifer had wanted to surround himself with his most loyal servants and in the process had ended up resurrecting several dozen angels and demons who had worked to free him.  Ruby had been restored, but instead of giving her rank or an assignment, Lucifer had kept her at his main estate. He’d remembered his vessel’s fondness for her and it had piqued his curiosity.  The memory played out in Sam’s mind, overwhelming him.

 

_The sight of Ruby, in that familiar form, nude and exposed, it made something deep inside Sam stir.  Lucifer observed the reaction with interest. She had once given his vessel such pleasure and now… now she inspired so many intriguing feelings._

_Ruby looked up at him in shock, not fully understanding what was happening.  Her mouth opened slightly before she could bring herself to ask, “Sam?” When he didn’t reply, her lips briefly quivered and her eyes widened.  “Lucifer?”_

_“Everyone else, leave.”_

_He wanted to try something._

_Once the rest of his minions had left the room Lucifer telekinetically closed and locked the door behind them.  He took Ruby’s hand, guiding her from the parlor where she had been resurrected to an adjoining bedroom. When she saw the king-size bed she stopped walking.  He noticed her hesitation, but that didn’t dissuade him. With no effort at all he pushed her forward until she was right next to the bed. He began undoing his belt.  Ruby nervously looked around the room. Her eyes landed on the door on the far wall. He lightly touched her jaw with his fingertips and turned her face to look up at him._

_For a moment he studied her, trying to understand what Sam had seen in her.  Some pathetically primitive concepts of beauty flare in the consciousness of his vessel, but that hadn’t remotely interested the archangel.  The truly enticing aspect was the vulnerability that such an underwhelming demon had inspired in Sam. She had managed to devastate him in ways that Lucifer didn’t understand.  There was something powerful between them, greater than the sum of the two unremarkable creatures. Their relationship had led his vessel to the edge of ruin. He longed to observe it, to dabble in what had been one of their most intimate share experiences._

_Lucifer had never had sex before, but that didn’t bother him in the slightest.  He drew from Sam’s memories, trying to settle on what approach might be most pleasurable for him.  His vessel and Ruby had always had somewhat aggressive sex, so that’s what he’d do too. Demons were tough, even tougher than Sam had assumed.  He could tear her apart if he wanted and mend the pieces back together. Anyway, she was his to use however he saw fit, regardless of any plans to fix her._

_He pushed Ruby back onto the bed.  She braced herself, gripping the bedding as he climbed on top of her.  He pressed into her with such force that her fingers tore the sheets. She gritted her teeth as he thrust.  Somewhere deep inside his mind Sam was screaming, overcome with far too many emotions for the human soul to process.  It was fascinating. The whirlwind of insights and raw physical pleasure made Lucifer even harder. He didn’t bother trying to make it last.  There would be time to try the experiment again. She cried out as he thrust into her one last time, hard enough for the headboard to crack the drywall._

_As he climbed off of her, Lucifer noted the fond memories and connotations that flared in Sam.  This bond between him and his vessel had turned out to be an unexpected perk of their joining. Studying all the ways that Ruby had affected him would certainly prove fruitful._

_Lucifer stood over her and took a moment to let Sam admire her naked body if he so chose.  Her face was painted with wariness and concern, but she had enough good sense to not attempt fighting him.  Without saying a word to her, he turned and left the room, locking the door behind him. He’d hardly reached the end of the hallway when he heard her struggling against the sealed door._

 

Sam’s stomach knotted and for a moment he thought he might throw up.  Lucifer had forced himself on her repeatedly. It didn’t matter to the archangel that she wasn’t happy.  She was a thing that Sam had enjoyed playing with and Lucifer was interested in exploring such an easily attainable source of insight and pleasure.

After Ruby got pregnant she had been continuously under guard by three angels.  She was allowed to research nephilim, but for the most part she was just meant to be available if Lucifer wanted some entertainment.  He hadn’t bothered to be there during her almost fifty-six hours of labor, but he had arrived immediately afterwards. He’d reached out to take the newborn from her, but he didn’t get the chance.  Ruby had pulled back the bed sheet to reveal a sigil written in blood. She had touched it with her bloody hand, then everything had gone dark.

“He raped you,” Sam whispered.

She stared at him for several seconds with a strangely reserved expression, then asked, “You remember it?”

He nodded weakly.  Neither of them knew what to say.  They’d both been used by Lucifer in different ways and for the first time in too long they were free of their captor.  Of course, they weren’t in an ideal situation. They weren’t on good terms by any means and to make matters worse there was a child in the picture.  

She hadn’t needed to keep the baby.  It would’ve been easier to leave it or even kill it—he honestly wouldn’t have been surprised by either scenario.  Maybe she had taken the infant as a hostage; some leverage to use over Lucifer, if such a thing was possible. Yet keeping something that was potentially so valuable to him also put that much larger of a target on her back.

“Why didn’t you kill her?” Sam asked softly, uncomfortable with merely articulating the thought.

Ruby nodded to herself as she considered the question.  “I thought about it,” she admitted. “If I killed her, then what?”

“She’s his.  I thought you’d have wanted to….”  He couldn’t tell if the thought of her killing a child or holding onto a memento of her assault more unsettling.

“She’s also mine,” Ruby replied, then quietly added, “She’s also yours.”

Sam exhaled an unamused laugh at the thought that his relationship to the whole thing might make a difference to her.  The idea that she gave a shit about him—the sentimentality of it was insulting and oddly painful. “Like you care about me.  You used me before and now you’re trying to drag me around using this kid as a leash.”

Her lip curled slightly in a small snarl.  “You’re such a self-centered, self-righteous—”

“ _I’m_ self-centered?   _I’m_ self-righteous?”  He narrowed his eyes at her.  “All you ever cared about was getting yourself ahead.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to make you like that?” she asked indignantly.  “To get you standing there on the edge, barely holding on?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sam said sarcastically.  “I’m sorry destroying the world was hard for you.”

“Fuck you.  You wouldn’t understand,” Ruby huffed, then added, “Dean and everybody kept giving you shit about being part demon, but you’re so fucking human.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was trying to do what needed to be done,” she said.  “You were my friend—”

“No!  No.” He pointed at her, hand trembling.  His throat was tight, struggling to speak through forming tears.  It was all too much. “You betrayed me.”

“That doesn’t change—“

“You don’t betray your friends!” Sam snapped, causing the baby to start crying.  “You fucking hurt me.”

“You were gonna be fine.  I was protecting us.”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t hurt me.”  He covered his face and wiped some tears from his eyes.  “Some subjective bullshit demon version of good intentions doesn’t change what you did to me.  You’re smarter than this. You can’t fuck me over like that and then act like you care.”

“Don’t pretend that you know me.”

“I used to think I did.”  His voice softened as he asked, “Was everything a lie?”

Ruby looked him in the eyes.  She seemed particularly solemn and tired.  He’d expected her to keep arguing with him or maybe even try to make amends, but she didn’t.  They silently stared at each other for several seconds before she turned away from him and started trying to soothe the crying baby.

He was beyond confused.  For some reason part of him felt like an asshole even though rationally he was pretty sure he was in the right.  It was frustrating as hell. That was just something that Ruby did to him. She had a way of getting him all mixed up—when she’d been alive… or close enough, even after she’d died, and now all over again.  She was basically the last person in the world he wanted to be around during such a strange and difficult time. He was trying to get his bearings in this new world. He’d just been freed from his imprisonment— _she’d_ just freed him from his imprisonment.  The thought made his stomach ache.

“Do you think you can drive for a little bit?” Ruby quietly asked while coaxing the agitated newborn back onto her nipple.

After a moment’s hesitation, he gingerly climbed into the driver’s seat while she moved to shotgun.  He didn’t look at her. Despite the limited cooperation based on necessity, he didn’t want her to think that things were alright between them.  He was too exhausted to even know what expression was on his face. It was probably the same discomfort that he briefly spotted on hers.

“Where are we going?”

“Forward,” she replied as she held the newborn closer to her.  “Anywhere but back there.”


	2. Late Winter: Tenuous at Best

As Sam drove he kept glancing over to check on the baby.  After feeding her, Ruby began gently rocking her. It was disorienting to see Ruby being almost nurturing.  The spectacle didn’t mesh with his understanding of the conniving demon. If anything it corroborated the odd sentimentality that she’d conveyed while talking about the kid being his.  The whole thing made him uncomfortable. It was weird enough that he suddenly had a kid out of nowhere, but to have Ruby along as some sort of emotionally-ruinous gift-with-purchase was too much—  Hell, he didn’t even know the baby’s name.

“What’s her name?”

“Well, Lucifer called her Seraphaela.  So definitely not that,” Ruby muttered.  “I haven’t settled on anything.”

He looked at Ruby skeptically.  “You’ve had her for three days and you didn’t name her?”

“I’ve never really named anything before and this kinda seemed important.”

Sam thought for a few seconds while driving, then suggested, “Emma.”

She raised an eyebrow at him.  “It’s a bit, well, quaint for a nephilim-cambion-maybe-antichrist, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” he agreed.  “It’s just the name of a little girl.”

After considering it for a moment, she nodded.  “Okay, sure. Emma.”

They drove in silence for a long time.  Sam had reflexively turned on the radio, but there was only static.  Thankfully, Ruby didn’t point out how foolish it had been for him to assume that there might be some remnants of civilization idling about out there.  He wasn’t sure exactly how bad the situation was, but they hadn’t seen any other signs of life in the few hours that he’d been conscious. Not to mention the glimpses he was catching of the last two years didn’t bode well.

Lucifer had been busy.  The archangel didn’t rest, after all.  He seemed to have only taken the occasional break from his routine of destruction to indulge his ego in the form of domineering his subordinates and playing with his toys—like Ruby.  But Sam did have some memories of his work: the systematic eradication of human civilization, the war against Michael’s followers, and, of course, the hunt for the human resistance. Hidden among those blurry images, he could recall some vague awareness of profound devastation and atrocities crafted by his own hands.  In a particularly unwelcome moment he could recall the sensation of warm, innocent blood turning cold on his fists. 

He stopped the car in the middle of the empty highway.  After a long silence, he asked, “Why did you save me?”

“I didn’t want Luci getting his favorite vessel back,” she replied coolly.

“It was dangerous to take me with you.”  He didn’t explicitly bring up the possibility of her killing him, but he was pretty sure that she was the sort of person to have considered it.  He wasn’t sure if she knew that Lucifer had claimed to be capable of bringing him back from the dead. It was true that the archangel had resurrected Ruby, but they were different species, one of Lucifer’s creation and the other with a soul that might go who-knows-where.  Never mind the fact that in her desperation and haste to flee, after what she had endured, he wouldn’t have honestly blamed her for slitting his throat in some cathartic attempt to take something from her abuser—instead she’d managed to keep a cool head and take two things from Lucifer in one fell swoop.

Ruby shifted in her seat and stared out the window at the moonlit hills around them.  “Well, maybe I didn’t want to do this alone.”

He didn’t know how to respond to what might’ve been some level of vulnerability.

Before he could say anything, she checked the clock, turned to him and said, “You’ve been driving long enough for someone who basically just came out of a coma.  We might as well trade while we’re stopped before you pass out at the wheel.”

Sam appreciated her attempt to kill the emotional moment with a gruff and arguably valid comment, but her effort was somewhat undercut when she handed off the sleeping Emma.  He was immediately dumbstruck at holding the baby for the first time. It was his first real chance to look at her up close. She felt so tiny and fragile in his hands. As he held her, she woke up and opened her eyes.  His mouth fell open in shock. Her eyes appeared to be solid black with ribbons of golden smoke that swirled around what might’ve been her uniformly black pupils.

“Her eyes…” he managed to say after nearly a minute of gawking.

“The best I can figure, it’s because she’s a nephilim,” Ruby explained.  “And a cambion. I’m not really sure what she is technically.”

Some strange recollection shifted in Sam’s mind.  He hadn’t ever studied angelic hybrids—not that there had been significant, meaningful resources on angels prior to the reemergence of angels on Earth in the recent years.  But despite never having read the word ‘nephilim’ he somehow knew a considerable amount about them. Nephilim were incredibly rare, and incredibly powerful. Their power was largely determined by the choir of their angelic parent, who they were often stronger than.  Somehow he knew it…. He knew it because Lucifer had known it.

“I can feel….  I remember about nephilim.”  Sam touched his head. “I think I remember what he knows.”

Ruby’s eyes widened.  “Wait, when you say 'what he knows,' do you mean, like, knowledge, not just you remembering when you were riding shotgun?”

“There were seven other nephilim before Emma; I know that, but I didn’t learn it.  I don’t think I saw him learn that. It’s just this fact in my head and I don’t know how else it could’ve gotten there.”

“He read your mind,” Ruby mused aloud.  “That’s how he knew that we used to fuck.  He was digging around in your head, but maybe it was a two-way road.  What does he care if you can see him as long as you’re trapped inside?”

The suggestion that he had some hidden treasure trove of knowledge felt like a weapon that could be used against Lucifer, but it wasn’t nearly as easy as that.  He wasn’t in any shape to fight an archangel. Not only did he have a newborn depending on him, but he also didn’t even know how to access whatever lost source of trivia might be inside his head.  

“I don’t know.  I don’t remember.”  He felt disoriented.  As he tried to recall memories or new information that he might’ve acquired from Lucifer, his thoughts kept turning fuzzy and fracturing.  He attempted to reassemble the pieces into something useful, but it felt like he kept grasping at fragments. The effort started causing a small headache and an exhausted tear escaped him.  “I can’t just make it happen. It’s too confusing. I don’t know what I know.”

“You’ve been through a lot and you’re a human,” she said in an attempt to excuse him that still managed to leave him feeling a bit insulted.  “Maybe after you rest… maybe you’ll feel more together.”

Sam sighed at another unpleasant thought.  “If he knows everything I know—if he knows me that well—he’ll be able to predict my moves and know what I’m going to do.”

“You just woke up in a fucking horror movie,” Ruby observed.  “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do?”

Hearing it framed like that made him feel even more daunted.  “No.”

“Then I think it’s safe to say that he isn’t one step ahead of you right now.”

Sam rubbed his stinging eyes as it occurred to him that it’d been years since he didn’t have Lucifer’s shadow on him.  He wasn’t by any means safe from the archangel, but for the moment he was himself. Sitting there in the car, holding Emma, away from all the violence and destruction—the stillness of it was profound.  It nearly felt like peace, though he knew it wouldn’t last. Lucifer was undoubtedly looking for them. But for the moment he was free.

* * *

After another half hour or so, Sam began feeling himself nodding off and decided to get some sleep before he accidentally dropped Emma.  He carefully climbed into the back of the station wagon to lie down and rest. Ruby gave him Emma to hold so that she could continue focusing on driving.  He let the newborn sleep on his chest while he studied her in the dim moonlight. He was still getting used to the idea that she was his, yet there was something deeply comforting about knowing that she was safe and with him.

He dozed lightly but was awoken sometime later when the car shook.  Ruby had had to drive up onto the sidewalk in order to squeeze by what seemed to be a long-abandoned five-car collision.  They were passing through a town. He looked out the window at the ruins. 

“We should’ve gone around,” he told her.

“There was no way around.”

He held Emma close and sat up.  Some instinct that he didn’t fully understand kicked in, telling him that the light from the car was dangerous.  “Turn off the headlights.”

Thankfully, she turned them off before asking, “What’s wrong?”

“They gather in cities,” he whispered while still trying to fit the pieces together in his head.  “Do you have any weapons?”

She pulled an angel blade from the glovebox, then handed it to him without hesitation.  “Angels?”

His stomach dropped as the last segment clicked into place.  “Croats.” 

“What?”

“Humans infected with a zombie-like rage virus.”  He was too busy watching their surroundings to stare at her in exasperation.  “How do you not know about Croats?”

“I’m sorry.  I was dead and then a prisoner for the last two years.  Next time I’ll be sure to ask for the daily newspaper.” She shook her head, then asked, “When you say zombies, are we talking slow-moving or fast-moving?”

“Fast.”

“Fucking fantastic,” she muttered.

The car crept through the dark streets as they cautiously watched for signs of danger.  Sam strained to hear anything that might be the growl of a Croat or rustling down a side street, but the purr of the station wagon made it difficult to be sure.  When Emma made a soft whimpering noise in her sleep, he gently rubbed her back, trying to quiet her so that he could continue listening for ominous sounds. They managed to get four more blocks without incident, and he said a silent prayer that they were nearly through or at least out of harm's way.

Sam squinted at the night, then commented, “There are usually some out, but I’m not seeing signs of any.  Not even bodies on the street.”

“Are they in every town?”

“I think we only saw them in maybe about half of the places I can remember.  The bigger the city the more likely there are Croats,” he explained. “They’re what’s left of the populat—“

Sam froze as they began driving through the leveled town center.  Many of the buildings were little more than heaps of rubble. Dozens or hundreds of skeletons had been picked clean by animals.  The sight triggered a wave of memories: Lucifer walking through those very streets as his minions gathered their prey. He had gripped the throat of a little boy and burnt his flesh until there was nothing but ash in his hands.  At his orders families had been torn from each other’s arms before being literally torn apart.

“Oh, my god,” Sam gasped as he started hyperventilating.

“Croats?” Ruby asked as she looked around, but didn’t see any threats outside the car.  She reached back to check on him. Her hand held him down to the mattress. “What the hell is going on?  What’s wrong?”

“We did this,” he quickly whispered between frantic breaths.  “W-we were happy—when we killed—”

“Sam, I need you to keep it together,” she told him in a firm voice.  “You’ve been here before, right? Are there Croats?” When he didn’t answer right away, she asked again, “Sammy, are there Croats?”

“We killed them.”  He was crying and shaking.  “We killed everyone.”

Ruby turned the headlights on and started speeding through the streets as best she could while avoiding the stalled cars that littered the roads.

“Okay, Sam.  You don’t have to look.  Just close your eyes,” she suggested in what she hoped was a calming voice.  “Close your eyes and talk to me about something else.”

He was trembling and it was taking all his focus to not hold Emma too tightly in his panic.  The newborn wriggled in protest, so he tried to gently pat her back in time to deep breaths, but unpleasant images kept creeping into his mind.

“Sam, come on.  Talk to me about something dumb,” Ruby said.  “Who was your first kiss?”

The question was equally absurd and invasive, which threw him.  “Wh-what?”

“Tell me the story of your first kiss.”

He hadn’t told anyone about it and he sure as hell didn’t want to tell Ruby something so personal.  “I’m not gonna—“

“I’m trying to distract you, genius,” she explained in an annoyed tone.  “Are you gonna play ball or not?”

He could see her point as much as he didn’t want to talk to her about it.  After a slight hesitation he answered, “Her name was Amy.”

“How old were you?” Ruby asked while driving over a median to avoid a fallen street light.

He had to think back to remember where they’d been living at the time, which school he’d been attending.  “Fourteen.”

“Tongue?”

He couldn’t help but exhale a weak laugh at the thought.  That definitely sounded like Ruby. “No” he replied. “It was one of those awkward little ones.  We were in her living room on the couch.”

“Why her?”

“She was different….”  He barely even noticed the buildings receding behind them as they escaped the town.  “She was a kitsune. My dad was hunting her mom.“

“Classic Romeo and Juliet scenario.”

“She killed her mom to protect me.”  He sighed, but at least it was part of a deep, deliberate breath.  “She wanted me to run away with her, but I couldn’t do it.” 

“And how different your life would’ve been,” she commented before asking, “Do kitsune have individual pups or litters?”

“It depends on the subspecies,” he replied, then admitted the source of his knowledge.  “There were a few times when I regretted turning her down.”

“You wanted a kid?”

He looked down at the baby that was napping on his chest.  Ever since Jessica’s death, he’d assumed that having a child wasn’t an option.  It’d taken time to accept that he’d never have a family, but the life of a hunter just wasn’t compatible with a significant other or children.  Then after Lucifer had escaped and learning that he was the archangel’s vessel, it seemed like having a child was the worst thing he could do.

Sam gently caressed Emma’s soft brown hair, then her arm.  When his finger got to her hand she gripped it. His chest ached at the act, the experience he’d never expected to have.  And yet interacting with his baby wasn’t the ideal moment he’d once longed for. Nearly everything else was wrong.

He quietly corrected her.  “I wanted a different life.”

“Congratulations,” she replied.  “Your life is very different.”

* * *

A couple of hours after sunrise, they parked by the side of the highway next to a large grassy field.  Unfortunately, Sam still lacked sufficient warding to hide him from scrying, so he couldn’t leave the car.  Ruby mercifully took a walk to stretch her legs while he awkwardly peed out of the driver’s side rear door. To his immense discomfort, it took him a minute or two to remember how.  It was nearly painful and his urine was ominously dark—granted, that was possibly the first time in two years that he had peed. His body was still adjusting to being human again. The transition was bound to be a bit rough at times.  

When she returned he noticed that the back and lower half of Ruby’s gown was stained brown with old blood.  She hadn’t stopped to change her clothes before fleeing the estate. For a moment he imagined her staggering through the elegant halls, ivory gown heavy with her own blood, carrying a newborn in one arm… probably dragging his unconscious body behind her with the other.  She was resilient. Regardless of any animosity, he’d give her that. He silently watched her as she pulled a pair of MRE rations from a backpack, then handed one to him.

“I thought you were a fried-potatoes-or-bust kind of girl,” Sam said when he saw her start to reluctantly eat the other ration.

“It’s called calories, Clément.  I need them or else Emma doesn’t get them.”  She chewed a particularly tough piece of what might’ve technically been meat, then said, “I’m not cold fusion.  I don’t make energy out of nothing.”

Sam eyed the backpack, which didn’t appear to be bursting at the seams.  “How many do you have left?”

“Fifteen,” she replied.  “And we have just under six gallons of clean water left.”

He stared at her, shocked by the sudden realization that unless they found something else, there was a very finite number of days that he and Emma could survive.  She continued to eat her ration, but she stared at him knowingly. That would be their sole meal for the day and if they didn’t find something else fast, they’d have to start rationing even more.

He gingerly took a bite of his MRE.  As far as he knew, it was the first thing he’d eaten in roughly two years.  The sensation of food in his mouth felt oddly intense. When he swallowed, the bland, dense bite seemed as heavy as lead in his stomach.  It was all-around unpleasant, as peeing had been, but he supposed human sorts of things might take a little getting used to.

After their pitiful brunch, Sam lay back down on the mattress while Ruby sat cross-legged next to him.  They stayed like that for five hours while she tattooed a large anti-detection ward onto his right shoulder with a sharp piece of wire and the ink from a handful of pens.  He mostly took care of Emma while Ruby worked, but she did take two short breaks to feed the newborn.

“Done.”  She put away the improvised needle, then reached over and opened up the passenger-side door.

Sam climbed out and stretched his aching body.  He walked into the nearby field, then knelt down.  The cool late winter air didn’t even bother him. It was the first time in what felt like an eternity that he’d been outside and it was incredible.  He ran his fingers through the dewy grass and felt the breeze on his skin. He didn’t even cover his face as he started crying; the wind on his damp cheeks felt like a gift.

Ruby didn’t say anything.  Instead she just leaned against the side of the station wagon and watched him while holding Emma.  He didn’t know what he expected her to say. 

“According to some signs we passed there’s a town maybe another thirty minutes down the road,” she told him.  “You might be able to find a car there.”

She was giving him an out.  He could just walk away with a fresh start… but that would mean turning his back on so much of what had happened.  There was barely any human civilization left out there and he had no idea whether he’d be allowed into it. Surely his face was infamous.  He couldn’t imagine being able to get close enough to other people to help them. Long past were the days of saving people. Leaving now would only mean turning his back on Emma.  When it came right down to it, she was all he had left in the world.

“I’m not gonna leave her,” he said with absolute conviction.  “And I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Ruby nodded at his answer, then replied, “Okay.  We need some ground rules—”

“I’m not drinking your blood,” Sam stated firmly, eager to get that boundary established.

“Good,” Ruby agreed with an almost hostile sharpness to her voice.  “The last thing I need is for you to drain me.”

“And we’re partners.”  He pointed at her. “This isn’t like last time.  You don’t get to control me.”

“But I get to make the calls on stuff where Lucifer might be able to guess your moves,” she clarified.

Sam wasn’t sure exactly what that sort of scenario might look like, but he had to admit that the basic premise made sense.  He couldn’t for the life of him predict what Ruby was about to do at any given moment and he knew her better than probably anyone else in the world.  Lucifer might be able to guess at his moves, but she’d already blindsided the archangel once before.

“Deal.”

Ruby thought for a moment, trying to come up with any additional rules to get nailed down, then pointed her finger back at him threateningly.  “You’re allowed to be angry at me, but don’t call me a whore or bring up what Lucifer did—“

“I won’t,” Sam hastily said, a little taken aback by and deeply uncomfortable with the suggestion.  “I don’t think—you didn’t ask for that or deserve—you won’t hear that kind of thing from me.”

He could only imagine where that concern had come from.  Who-knew-how-many of Lucifer’s loyalists had probably harassed her out of some misguided perceived favoritism.

“And you’re her dad,” Ruby stated flatly.  “I don’t care if she’s got some grace or whatever.  You’re it. No one else.”

“Yeah.  I’m her dad.”  Sam nodded. “It’s as simple as that.” 


	3. Late Winter: What We Did

The next day they discovered what would surely become the pattern for the rest of their probably-short lives:  they spent nearly every moment seeking out food and temporary shelter. The more they explored the strange new world, the better they understood how scarce supplies would be.  Every restaurant and grocery store had been picked clean a year ago or more. Luckily, in theory, unspoiled canned and jarred foods might still exist. Civilization hadn’t collapsed that long ago, after all.  

But as they checked the fifth abandoned rural home and found yet another empty pantry they realized that food was rare enough that it would dictate every aspect of their lives.  They would need to find something more than their limited supply of MREs and that took precedence over where they slept or which direction they headed overall. 

Promising water was nearly as difficult to locate.  While traveling they had passed a few natural sources, such as creeks and rivers, but they both knew that it wasn’t safe to drink straight from the spring.  It would take a significant amount of processing to refine it and even then there were risks posed by the possibility of extreme contamination. To their disappointment, the plumbing wasn’t working in any of the houses that they had visited.  The pipes didn’t appear to be damaged, which meant that something had happened at the source—something beyond their ability to fix.

After a little trial and error, Sam created a filter out of a plastic bottle, a cotton shirt, and some sand in order to help them filter water from the nearby river.  They found a small, lightweight pot for boiling the water and a canteen. It wasn’t ideal, but they’d at least be able to slowly replace some of their water whenever they had access to a natural source.

That evening they decided to spend the night in one of the abandoned homes.  They carefully warded the house, then barricaded every door and window on the first floor.  Sam and Emma slept in a second-floor bedroom while Ruby lingered, occasionally patrolling the filthy home.  Despite there being available beds, Sam opted to sleep on the floor. All the mattresses smelled like mildew and he didn’t want his newborn daughter breathing that in all night.  He found an inflatable sleeping mat in one of the closets, though the sleeping bag had been taken, probably when the homeowners had fled. Instead he located the cleanest heavy wool blanket he could and attempted to get some sleep.  His exhaustion overwhelmed him and he was unconscious in seconds.

* * *

_ They were Lucifer.  He could feel the chilling creature in his body, consuming him from the inside out.  It was overwhelming in every way imaginable. His senses were strained to the point that he felt like he was smothered and beyond.  There was too much input, more than a human might experience. His surroundings were pressing in on him, making him want to hide within himself, to retreat to the core and block out everything the archangel was doing with his body—but he was scared to retreat.  He didn’t want to hide to the point of ignorance. He’d been the one to consent to Lucifer, to give him form and allow him to commit his new atrocities. He had to know what was being done with their hands.  _

_ They were standing in the courtyard of a small village in the Alps.  Their troops had scoured the hillsides looking for survivors of the most recent assault.  There had been something unusual about the last mission. The humans had put up too strong a resistance and Lucifer had decided to go investigate the matter himself. _

_ It hadn’t taken long for him to find the angel that had been protecting the humans.  He found Hannah standing guard at the entrance to the labyrinth cellar below a many-generations-old winery at the edge of the town.  She was sheltering nearly two hundred children in the massive combination cellar and bomb shelter. It was easy to take her. She could barely defend herself, let alone the human children, though that didn’t stop her from trying to protect them.   _

_ Rather than killing her outright, Lucifer had pulled her by the throat to the surface and dragged her into the town square.  A little humiliation and catharsis were in order. The children were brought along, too, by their minions, pulled crying and screaming from their hole in the dirt. They’d wanted to teach their sister a lesson before they killed her.  Hannah was restrained in the large courtyard and made to watch. One of their troops brought forward the first child, who couldn’t have been more than a couple years old. The toddler was delivered to Lucifer. They felt nothing but loathing for the small, disgusting creature before them.  While she watched they gripped the child’s head. They didn’t hesitate when they snapped his neck. _

 

Sam woke up gasping.  His body was shaking and covered in sweat.  He was incredibly confused. He was being held down.  In a panic, he grappled the person. Within a second he was on top of Ruby, pinning her to the floor.  Somehow he was holding an angel blade to her throat. For a moment he had thought that he must’ve summoned it to his hand like so many times before, but remembered that he couldn’t do that anymore.  He must’ve managed to grab the weapon in the shuffle before pressing it to her neck.

She didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to risk cutting her throat on the blade.  Her eyes were avoiding him and it almost looked like they were watering. Emma was crying on the ground beside them.

He took a deep breath, trying to collect his thoughts, then he carefully removed the blade from her flesh.

In an uncharacteristically quiet voice she whispered, “Please get off of me.”

He realized that he was pressing against almost her entire body.  His offhand was clamped firmly on her right wrist, holding her down.

As soon as he was off of her, she scrambled into a kneeling position and retreated several feet back from him.  She picked up Emma as she adjusted her dress to cover herself. Her expression was a strangely-reserved fear. They stared at each other, both unnerved by what had just happened.  She wasn’t prepared to take her eyes off of him, but she gently rocked the baby in an attempt to soothe her.

“You’re Sam.”  

He couldn’t tell from her quiet, shaken voice whether she was trying to remind him or herself.

“I’m me,” he said to reassure them both.  He dropped the angel blade to the floor and looked at his hands.  “I didn’t mean to….” His lips were trembling and a few tears escaped him.  His watering eyes anxiously darted around the shadowy room before settling on Ruby.  She was still watching him cautiously and holding the newborn defensively. “I’m… I’m sorry I scared you.”

“It’s not your fault,” she replied in what he wasn’t sure was forgiveness.  She barely relaxed at all.

Emma started nuzzling her mom’s chest, looking for a nipple.  Ruby carefully pulled out her breast so that the baby could latch on, but she took a little extra care to cover herself to whatever extent possible.  It was a worrying tell. He felt terrible.

“I had a nightmare.”

“I know.  I heard you,” she replied.  “You were talking and jerking around.”

“What was I saying?”

Ruby watched the baby nurse for a moment before looking up and replying, “You were begging for people’s lives.”

Sam sat there in the dark, silently crying at the memories that came trickling back into his mind.  He looked at his hands, horrified of what he’d done—what he’d been made to do to children. His eyes settled on Emma and his heart broke.  He was trembling, desperately trying to get himself under control. Ruby shifted and for a second he thought she might be about ready to offer his daughter to him as a way of soothing him.  

Normally, it would’ve helped, but in that moment he was terrified to touch the newborn.  He recoiled slightly into the side of the bed and placed his palms on the floor in an attempt to find stability or maybe signal to Ruby that he didn’t want to hold the baby.  The sensation of small bones cracking below soft, warm flesh… he could still feel it. He could still feel Lucifer’s nearly amused indifference, the ease with which every snap came.

Ruby studied him for a long while.  In the moonlight he could see the wariness and concern on her face.  Even after Emma was done nursing, she held her daughter tightly to her.  It was a defensive move. She really was scared of him. The realization was strangely painful, but he couldn’t blame her.  He was scared of himself. Meanwhile, she had just been restrained and threatened by him, the guy with the face of her abuser—and she was trying to protect Emma from threats wherever they might come.

To his surprise, instead of warning him to stay away from them, she asked, “You want to talk about it?”

“No,” he replied reflexively.

She moved a little bit further away, then leaned against the wall in order to give him some space.  He sat there, caught between keeping an anxious eye on Emma and being unable to look at her without imagining how fragile she was, how easily her tiny neck—  A few more tears trickled down his cheeks and his body unconsciously rocked slightly.

It was uncomfortable as hell being so obviously vulnerable.  Ruby wasn’t an idiot. She essentially knew what was wrong, she just didn’t know the details.  He’d experienced a huge amount of trauma over the last two years. There was no doubt that he was fucked up.  It was pointless trying to pretend that he was any better than he actually was. The last thing either of them needed was for them to start lying to each other and keeping secrets that might endanger their daughter.

“We were in Tenero-Contra.  There was a fallen angel trying to hide a group of maybe two hundred human children.  Intel said that they included all that was left of the Roma. Lucifer was so angry that our—his sister was trying to save them.  I tried to stop us, but we made Hannah watch.” Sam reached up to wipe away some tears, but stopped to look at his hands once again.  He whispered, “We broke their necks.”

Ruby quietly processed what he’d told her.  Her eyes briefly drifted from his trembling hands to their daughter.  When she looked up to meet his eyes, there was a pensive quality to her.  She knew why he hadn’t asked to hold Emma. They sat in a silence that was deeply painful.  She knew, and there wasn’t anything to be said or done to make things better. He was—

“Lucifer did it,” she told him, derailing his thoughts.  “None of it was you.”

“We both know that doesn’t mean as much as it should.”

“A few hours ago, I would’ve happily had you carry her for a while,” Ruby replied.  “Right now, every instinct in my body wants to put a blade in you.”

A fresh wave of shame washed over him, but before he could think of how to respond she started scooting closer to him.  For a moment he thought about retreating, giving her more space, avoiding whatever she was about to do to him. But instead of attacking him or threatening him, she sat down in front of him and positioned Emma so that he could see his daughter.  Her hand was shaking slightly as she very gingerly reached out towards him. She gently took his hand and laid it on their daughter’s chest.

“You don’t have to hold her yet, but we’re dealing with this,” she explained, then attempted to defuse some of the emotional tension by adding, “There’s no way in hell you’re getting off the hook for carrying her around.”

He pursed his lips and nodded because he couldn’t have spoken through the tightness in his throat even if, through some miracle, he could’ve found the words.

“This is gonna happen,” she said, almost to herself.  “We’re gonna have setbacks. We’ll need to relearn it.”

He swallowed hard, then asked, “Relearn what?”

“To trust each other.”

* * *

Sam had trouble sleeping after the nightmare and incident with Ruby.  It wasn’t the images of the dead children or the thought of hurting Emma that had kept him up most of the night, though that had still flashed occasionally through his mind, making his stomach turn sour with guilt.  The surprisingly haunting thing had been Ruby’s suggestion that they’d grow to trust each other again—well, more likely that he would eventually trust her again and that she would learn to trust him initially. He refused to believe that someone who had deceived him throughout their entire relationship had ever actually trusted him. 

She had violated his trust before and the results had been devastating.  He didn’t want to be that vulnerable to her again, to place himself in her hands.  The unfortunate fact of the situation was that in a very real way they were relying on each other to survive.  Maybe he could technically live without Ruby, but not if he wanted to stay in his daughter’s life. And maybe Ruby could survive without either him or Emma, but it seemed as though she didn’t want to.  After all, it wasn’t like he could stop her if he tried—and she’d been the one to rescue them to begin with.

But counting on someone to do a sufficient enough job that nobody died was different than trust.  Trust was something earned. It was nurtured faith. It was the belief that the other person was looking out for your interests, in all their varied forms.  He didn’t have that confidence in Ruby. There had been a time, but it had died in that church along with her. It had taken the will of an archangel, the most powerful being on Earth, to resurrect Ruby.  Restoring his faith in her wouldn’t be nearly that easy.

When the morning came he felt fatigued from the long night with too little sleep, but there was something else.  As he packed up his sleeping mat he noticed a tension in his body. His muscles were coiled, which he’d initially dismissed as the result of sleeping on the floor.  But he realized there was something else going on when the sound of a bird flying from a tree just outside the bedroom startled him. His hands gripped the mat tightly as his heart suddenly hammered.

He was on edge; understandably so.  The trauma was real and it would stay with him for a long time—possibly the rest of his life.  He’d been harmed, including by his primary companion. Whether it be the result of a long-established positive feedback loop of adrenaline or a perfectly rational fear of the world that he found himself in, he was raw and anxious.  But as reasonable as it was for him to feel that way, on another level he had that additional weakness. He hated the idea of having things like that which Ruby might take advantage of. It was tempting to use that as an excuse to conceal things from her, though that was its own dangerous road.  He’d begrudgingly continue to be honest with her, but that didn’t mean he had to volunteer every detail nor let his guard down.

Neither of them spoke as they loaded up the station wagon with the limited supplies they’d managed to salvage.  There was both too much to say and nothing that he could bring himself to discuss with her. He took the first leg of the drive while she tended to Emma.  

Sometime during the night Ruby had located a warm coat that was large enough on her to allow her to wrap their daughter too.  She silently nursed and held Emma while staring out the passenger’s side window at the gloomy forest they were passing. 

He wasn’t sure which one of them was mourning the death of radio more.  They both normally listened to something while driving and the silence that was only periodically interrupted by their daughter was awkward as hell.  “Are there any tapes or CDs in this car?”

“I didn’t see any,” she replied.

That felt like just his luck.  He sighed before commenting, “Of all the cars, you had to find the only one in the world that doesn’t have any music.”

“I’d thought about taking a jag with a six-disc changer and auxiliary jack, but decided to fuck with you instead.”

Sam knew she was being sarcastic, but her tone was grating on his already-fried nerves.  He shifted, trying to stretch his sore back and muttered, “I wish you could just talk for five minutes without being a dick.”

“Eat me,” Ruby shot back, then reconsidered her wording.  “You know what, with your history....“

He couldn’t tell if she was referring to his old propensity for going down on her or if she was referencing him drinking her blood.  With their current food shortage ever-present in their minds, he assumed it was the latter. While she was the kind of person who might bring up either their old sex life or his addiction, drinking the blood felt like the sort of cheap shot she’d make while angry.

“You— You’re gonna give  _ me _ shit about the blood?” he asked incredulously, sparing an exasperated sidelong glance.  “ _ You? _ ”

She looked as though she might be about to argue with him, but no snide comment came.  Instead she chewed the inside of her mouth for a moment as she processed the hypocrisy of it, then nodded to herself.  “Alright. Low blow.”

That wasn’t by any means an apology, but he still hadn’t been expecting for her to even acknowledge that her attack had been unfair.  He’d been anticipating another fight that would escalate until one of them started yelling enough to make Emma cry— The thought that that was the relationship he foresaw between his daughter’s parents made him feel sick.  As far as he was concerned, he’d never had both parents; he’d barely had one. But he knew that seeing parents fighting was very harmful to a child. 

He wasn’t about to just roll over and let Ruby go unchecked, but he needed to try to be the bigger person.  As far as he could tell she wasn’t the kind of person to prioritize civility. It’d be up to him to keep his cool and de-escalate things when they started going wrong.  The whole thing felt rather unfair. He’d just had his entire world explode and was barely human again. If anything, she should be the one tiptoeing around and accommodating him.  Sam fumed on the backwards arrangement for nearly fifteen minutes until they pulled over to stretch and pee. 

While getting out of the car, they traded off Emma to make it easier to undo seatbelts.  After getting out of the car, when Sam was handing the newborn back to her Ruby’s jacket sleeve accidentally slipped down, revealing a large bruise on her wrist.  It was from when he’d held her down the night before. He looked at the oversized jacket she was wearing and wondered how much of her motivation for finding it had been to cover up the damage.  More unsettling was the question of whether she was attempting to hide it from him or herself. Drama aside, he hated the idea that he’d done something that had both injured her and probably triggered memories of her past assaults.  He hated that, minus all the excuses or justifications, it could be truthfully said that he had hurt Ruby in front of Emma. He didn’t want that to be their lives.

He swallowed his pride, then nodded toward the bruise.  “I’m sorry about that.”

Her eyes briefly took in the fact that he was talking about her wrist.  She pursed her lips, probably processing the sudden change in tone, and took a few steps away from him while she readjusted Emma’s wrap.  Without looking up from her daughter she quietly replied, “You were scared.”

“I know that we have problems and there’s a complicated history between us, but I wouldn’t actually….”  

He wanted to say that he wouldn’t hurt her, but the breadth of what that covered gave him pause.  Killing her wasn’t even on his radar anymore, though their relationship was hardly friendly. He was still angry at her, but they couldn’t spend their lives fighting each other.  It wasn’t fair to Emma and it would certainly get them killed eventually. He wasn’t sure that he’d ever be able to get over the betrayal, by the way things had happened. With hindsight being 20/20, in some small way he wasn’t even surprised she’d blindsided him so easily.  She was the sort of opportunist to take advantage of whatever she could and he had given her an invaluable opening.

The truth was that back when they were hunting Lilith he’d felt something for her.  He wasn’t prepared to call it love—that would be absurd—but maybe admiration or kinship.  She’d been incredibly important to him, beyond her role as his dealer. When things had been good, before it had all gone wrong, she’d been his teacher, emotional support, and lover.  He had thought that she was a companion and a partner to him, someone he could sincerely count on. Well, he had been completely fucking wrong.

“I know you’re one of the good guys,” she said, assuring him that she didn’t think he was the sort to hurt her for kicks.  “You always have been.”

The thought of him being characterized as someone remotely heroic made him huff an unamused laugh.  He definitely didn’t feel like any part of the last six or seven years had cast him in a positive light.  He hadn’t been able to save Dean from his crossroads deal, so he’d fallen in with a demon, resulting in the Apocalypse.  That being said, there was something about having one of the conspiring villains inform you that you were regarded as a ‘good guy’ that took some of the sting out of the entire scenario… or maybe it hurt more, seeing his figurative fall from grace through manipulation and his own pride.  And yet, she hadn’t described him as  _ previously _ being good; she seemed to think that, despite everything, he was still good.

He leaned against the side of the car and rubbed his face, uncomfortable with spending so much mental energy trying to parse her thoughts and feelings on him.  Anyway, what did she know? His eyes flicked to the petite, dangerous woman standing a few yards from him. A lot, actually. She knew a lot.

“Did that ever bug you?” he asked, then clarified, “Working with one of the good guys.”

She stopped idly tending to the baby and considered his question for a few seconds.  “Not really.”

“I guess it made me easier to manipulate.”  He avoided meeting her eyes by turning to watch the empty highway that stretched out to the horizon before them, then muttered, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

“I’m pretty sure most roads are paved with good intentions.  The road to Hell is just paved on a steep decline,” she replied, in a surprising, almost sympathetic move.

“I guess you would know.”

Ruby was a demon, which meant that she’d gone to Hell after her death as a human.  She knew the hard way how easy it was to end up doomed, though he wasn’t sure about all the details of her damnation.  Whatever she’d done before, he had to believe that there had been a time in her life when she’d been redeemable, but now she was something else.  He couldn’t bring himself to have hope, to imagine that she might someday be an altruist. Watching her hold their daughter, it hurt too much to think that he’d spend the rest of his short life with the worst of her as his companion.

“You being a good guy made you easier to predict,” she admitted.  “But I wouldn’t say you made it easy.”

Well, cold comfort was likely to be the only comfort he was gonna get.  “I’m glad to hear I was a pain in your ass.”

“And then some.  Brains, combat skills, fucking powers—”  Ruby shook her head as she kicked a fist-sized rock, sending it tumbling down the muddy highway embankment.  “You know what makes you dangerous that nobody sees coming?”

“What?”

“You’re too damn likable.”

Sam furrowed his brow at her, thrown by the statement.  For a moment he wanted to complain about her sarcasm or joking criticism, but he paused when he noticed her body language.  She wasn’t looking at him; she was looking anywhere but at him. Her arms were pulled close to her in what looked like insecurity.  It had been a sincere comment. She was ashamed of the fact that on at least some level she had liked him—possibility to the point that it had made her mission difficult.

He opened his mouth, unsure how to respond to such an unexpected confession.  After taking a moment to gather his wits he asked, “You really thought I was your friend, didn’t you?”

Ruby stood for a few seconds, silently looking past their damp, drab surroundings.  She circled around to the back of the station wagon, eager to get the chores for their break underway or maybe to just avoid him, but he could hear her quietly mutter, “I thought a lot of things that turned out to be wrong.” 


	4. Early Spring: Inescapable

After they got back on the road, Ruby took over driving while Sam took care of Emma for a while.  He let the baby doze on his lap, allowing him to rest his arms since he didn’t have to hold her upright.  As she slept she barely moved but for the tiny rise and fall of her chest and the occasional shift as she found a more comfortable position.  He watched her, marveling at her and regaining his comfort with her for what seemed like hours. 

The shock at the idea that he had a daughter was starting to roll off of him, but he still hadn’t fully grasped the situation.  When it came right down to it, she was the main priority in his life. He had no idea what he’d even do without Emma, where he’d go, what he’d salvage in his life.  Yet in an odd way focusing on her felt surprisingly natural to him. Maybe it gave his chaotic existence the meaning he so desperately needed now that he could no longer be a hunter.  Maybe he simply had a knack for being the kind of father he’d secretly longed to be in his more naive youth. Regardless of the blessed ease with which it came, it was still something that would take a while to lose its novelty.

He gently caressed the back of Emma’s hand as he started nodding off, joining her in her nap.  Their journey was rather dull and he was still recovering from his transition. The more time that passed the more confidence he gained in his body.  His memory was incredibly spotty, but for two years he’d existed without control of his form and subject to inhuman characteristics. It still shook him periodically to not have all eleven of their senses, but he was profoundly grateful that when he wanted to grab something his fingers moved.  That being said, he hadn’t remembered operating a physical body being so tiring. It was possible that that was the cause of normal human sleepiness and nearly everyone else just hadn’t thought about it enough to put two and two together.

Thankfully, Ruby let him nap.  They both knew that unless they found more fuel they would soon have to walk.  If it came to that each of them needed the other to be in the best shape possible.  So far it wasn’t clear how common gasoline was, but they both understood that on some level all manmade resources would be finite.  There was a very real chance that they might need to travel on foot before too long, so she let him sleep.

 

_ Sam was standing on the side of a highway, but he didn’t see the station wagon.  He’d hardly started spinning around to look for it when he froze. There was another Sam standing in the middle of the highway.  His double was wearing the entire white suit and had perfectly manicured hair. It was Lucifer. _

_ He could hardly think.  His mind was too full of rage and fear and every horrible emotion in between, accompanied by a good deal of confusion.  Seeing that monster with his face... a whole new flavor of shame flared in him. Ruby and Emma being nowhere to be found…. The doppelgänger…. knowing in his very soul that that was his old possessor— _

_ “Yes, this is a dream, but we really are speaking,” Lucifer said, cutting through all the existential hand-wringing.  He was looking at Sam with all the annoyance of a frustrated parent. “You need to come back.” _

_ “No!” Sam shouted, a little louder than he’d expected to.  “I’m never going back there. I’m never letting you back in.” _

_ “You won’t survive out there on your own.”  Lucifer raised an eyebrow. “You think that that conniving demoness is going to do anything less than sacrifice you?  You’re nothing more than a bargaining chip to her.” _

_ “She can’t fuck me over without risking that I’ll end up back with you.  The last thing she wants is you knowing where she is,” he countered. “She won’t take the chance.” _

_ The archangel considered him for a moment, then took a step forward.  Sam nearly recoiled, but managed to stop himself. It was a dream; he was safe.  Lucifer had undoubtedly observed the small, anxious shift of weight that he had just done while quelling the urge to retreat. _

_ A subtle smile crept across the angel’s lips before he said, “I will find you and I’ll find my daughter.” _

_ “She isn’t your daughter,” Sam told him. _

_ “The nephilim is mine.  I made her. I made sure that she survived—“ _

_ “You aren’t her father,” Sam restated more firmly. _

_ “And you think you are?”  Lucifer raised his voice in a surprising show of anger.  “You were nothing more than a means, merely incidental to her creation.  You think you’re remotely capable of controlling something—“ _

_ “She isn’t some  _ thing  _ to be controlled.  You don’t care about her.   You only care about your weapon.  She is a child!” Sam took several steps forward so that he was only a few inches from Lucifer’s face before yelling, “She is my daughter and I swear to God I will never give you the power to touch her!” _

_ The archangel was visibly seething with rage, but he couldn’t do anything inside the dream. _

_ “I will find you,” he whispered.  “And when I do I will make you suffer far beyond anything that you can even imagine.” _

_ “I can imagine just as much as you.  I know exactly what you’re capable of.”  Sam stared him down. “And my answer will always be no.” _

 

“Sam.”  It was Ruby’s voice calling to him from far away.  She was trying to wake him.

He opened his eyes as he took a moment to remember that he was free of Lucifer, then immediately checked on Emma.

“Something wrong?” he asked while looking around for Croats or an angelic hunting party.

“No more than usual out here,” she replied before explaining, “but you were making angry grunts in your sleep.  You’ve got to get these nightmares under control.”

Sam rubbed his face, trying to wrap his head around what had just happened.  As much as he wanted it to be a dream, deep down he knew it wasn’t as simple as that.  It hadn’t been his fear manifested; it had been the architect of his fear. “Lucifer spoke to me in through my dream.”

Ruby nearly slammed on the brakes but managed to not shake the car enough to wake Emma.  “What the fuck just happened?”

“He can’t tell where we are,” he assured her first and foremost.  “It’s just something angels can do with their vessels. He did it to me back before he possessed me, when he was trying to get me to say yes.  This time—he wants me to go back—“

“Big surprise,” she commented, before quickly looking over at him and adding, “Wait.  Did he straight up just ask you to come back?” Her lip curled into a small smile at the thought of the once-powerful archangel essentially begging a former victim to surrender himself once more.

Sam felt almost a bit resentful of such a quaint interpretation of the upsetting encounter.  “Not ‘ask.’ He was demanding.”

“Well—“  She tilted her head from side to side as she started driving again.  “As short-sighted as it might be, I’m glad he’s pissed off.”

“Oh, he’s pissed off.”  Sam absentmindedly tried to fix his daughter’s wispy brown hair.  “We got into a fight over Emma. He really didn’t like it when I told him he wasn’t her dad.”

Ruby nodded to herself for a few seconds as she drove before telling him, “Thanks for sticking up for her.”

“Don’t thank me for stuff like that.”  She’d made it sound like he was doing her a favor or that he’d gone above and beyond when he’d corrected Lucifer.  Of course he was going to stick up for Emma; she was his daughter. The unexpected and unnecessary gratitude made him uncomfortable.

She audibly sucked her teeth, then muttered, “No problem.”

“He said you’d betray me,” he told her in what he had to admit was a slightly offensive move.  Rather than leave the statement hanging in the air like an accusation that she actually would, he explained, “But... I figure me telling you that would probably make you do the opposite.  You’re probably the most spiteful person I’ve ever met, so….” He shrugged, unsure of how to finish.

“You’re damn right I am.”  She almost sounded pleased with that assessment.  

He didn’t really know how to respond to that.  It was bad enough that he’d toed the line with provoking her into another argument.  When it came right down to it he’d been lucky that she didn’t mind being perceived as spiteful….  Admittedly, the more he thought about it the more he realized that Ruby wore that sort of descriptor like a hand-tailored leather jacket.  It was part of her charm. The thought gave him heartburn. But before he could dwell too long, she offered him a distraction.

“We’re getting close to another town,” she commented.

He looked over his shoulder to see that they hadn’t just passed any traffic signs offering insight into where the hell they were at that point.  “How do you know?”

She didn’t respond for a short while, then gestured at the telephone poles along the road in front of them.  “The flyers are becoming more frequent.”

When they got closer he saw that the faded pieces of paper were depicting missing persons.  He indicated for her to stop the car in the middle of the road, then he got out to stretch his aching back and read a few.  The dates were mostly from around the time of his possession and slightly thereafter. Several of the flyers had faded beyond the point of legibility, hinting that the area might’ve been affected by the Croatoan virus early during the outbreak.

He ran his fingertips over the fragile, sun-beaten papers.  “We should skirt the town.”

“Are you worried about bad memories or Croats?” 

“Croats.”  He idly rocked Emma as she let out a little squeak sound.  “I’m sure the memories will find me no matter which direction we go.”

They proceeded with a new sense of caution, vigilant to make sure they didn’t accidentally wander into the edge of a settlement large enough to host Croats.  After about ten minutes they saw a few two-story houses that were spaced at least a hundred feet apart. The rural neighborhood had a lot of appeal from a scavenging perspective.  They could check each house one at a time without the risk of being surrounded by ample places for monsters to lurk.

By the time they reached the houses the station wagon was running on fumes.  Sam cut off a length of garden hose and used it to siphon gas from the other cars that they found in the neighborhood, but it seemed like there was barely anything to show for it.  He’d managed to collect an extra few gallons and they switched to a smaller sedan with better mileage, but they still ended up running out of gas three days later.

Rather than immediately abandoning the car, they took some time to enjoy the excess jugs of fresh water that they couldn’t bring with them.  Sam took some rope and tied what he could onto a small, wheeled garage dolley that he’d found while looking for tools. With their supplies secured, he started to craft a handle out of the remainder of the rope.

“Here.”  Ruby took the rope from him without asking and tied another design before he could accidentally cut it too short.  She tied it so that the end that wasn’t connected to the dolley looked like backpack straps. “So you don’t have to hold a rope in your hand all day.”

He had originally been ready to complain about her hijacking what he’d been working on, but he had to admit that he appreciated the thoughtfulness of the new design.  It hadn’t even occurred to him how exhausting and painful it might become, dragging something by a single rope for hours on end.

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to do this,” Sam muttered while staring at the fact that they could probably only bring two gallons of water with them.

“The alternative is starving to death in one of these houses or going back,” she replied.  “I’m not going back. I won’t do it.”

“I’m not saying we go back.”  He rubbed his face, preemptively fatigued.  “I just….”

“We’ll figure this out.”  Ruby stood a little taller.  “I’m a four-hundred-year-old witch who has amply traveled two of the planes.  You’re a thirty-year-old nearly-college-graduate with an archangel’s knowledge buried in your subconscious.  We can probably do better than cavemen.”

Sam almost smiled as he slipped on the straps for the dolley.  He was grateful that she was trying to keep morale up. Fighting with her was so damn exhausting.  Looking at the supplies he was about to start dragging down a highway for who-knew-how-many miles, he decided to save whatever energy he could by not bickering.  

Instead he commented, “A mule would be nice.  Maybe we can find a farm and reinvent animal husbandry while we’re at it?”

“As far as I’m concerned you can do whatever you want with a donkey.  We have the kid, but it’s not like we’re married.”

He looked at her, suddenly ready to correct her understanding of the term, but she was grinning at him.  It’d been a long time since he had seen that playful expression on her face. The sight of it made his chest a bit tight with emotions that were too muddied for him to begin processing.  All he knew was that he preferred it to the resentful, worn, and nearly defeated expressions he’d seen on her face for the last three days.

“Come on.”  She was almost purring.  “Admit it. I got you pretty good with that one.”

He let out a little, exhaled laugh, then confessed, “Yeah, okay.  You got me.”

She smiled as they started walking.  “If you want to trade off after a while, you can take Emma and I can get the supplies.”

He glanced down at Ruby’s smaller, less-muscular form before asking, “You sure?”

She shook her head in mild disappointment.  “It really has been too long since we hung out.  Remember: I have demonic strength.”

Sam helplessly recalled memories of the two of them having rough, intoxicated sex while he’d been hunting Lilith.  Ruby had routinely let him treat her like prey while he was feeding on her, but on more than one occasion she’d handily forced him off of her and turned the tables.  He felt a tiny flare of fondness and embarrassment knot in his stomach at the thought of the two of them breaking a motel room headboard while they had fucked. 

As he briefly thought about them having sex a wholly unwelcome memory sparked in his mind.  

_ Lucifer was on top of Ruby.  She was naked and had several bruises from when he’d been too rough with her.  Her ankles and wrists were bound in silver Enochian-engraved manacles, but she didn’t even struggle against them.  She was just lying there, looking away from him as he raped her. _

 

Thoroughly rattled by the memory, Sam stumbled on a bit of uneven pavement and fell to the ground.  Ruby knelt down to see if he was hurt or maybe even help him up, but when she extended her hand to him he didn’t take it.  The bruise on her wrist was still visible, peeking out from below her sleeve. He recoiled from her. Touching her felt wrong and it scared him.  

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“A memory,” he replied without meeting her eyes.

Ruby took in his sudden withdrawn posture, then her eyes lingered on her own hand, which she pulled back.  She must’ve seen his discomfort and fear because her expression softened a bit. There was unmistakable pity in her face, even if it was just barely visible.  She subtly adjusted her sleeve to cover her wrist while getting up to give him a bit of distance. After a few seconds she told him, “Whatever it was you saw, that wasn’t you.”

* * *

By the end of their first week, Sam had lost a notch on his belt.  He’d scavenged a new, warmer and less conspicuous pair of pants, though they were a few inches too short.  A similarly ill-fitting yet warm winter jacket helped during the evenings and nights. What he lacked in pant cuffs and sleeve length, he made up for with a double thickness of socks on his feet and cutting a few to be improvised gloves.  

Ruby had found some shirts and a wool coat that were only slightly large on her, but she hadn’t yet found pants in a decently close size so she remained in the white, blood-stained maternity gown that she’d escaped in.  She had also managed to upgrade her shoes from some heels she’d stolen off one of Lucifer’s subordinate’s vessels to more comfortable and functional sneakers.

Strangely, clothes for Emma were the easiest to find.  It seemed like a quarter of the attics that they checked had plastic bins containing old, sentimental baby clothes of some sort or another.  They didn’t find a large number of a particular size in any given location, but there was enough to work with and it boded well for future scavenging.

While exploring the second house of that day Sam walked by a bedroom’s open doorway and spotted Ruby digging through an underwear drawer.  She didn’t seem to notice him because she pulled a pair of black lace panties from the collection, then held it in front of her only to discover that they were too large.  He quickly looked away and continued silently down the hallway, eager to avoid any awkwardness that might result from him gawking at her would-be panties.

Several minutes later he found a linen closet containing a few blankets.  He stripped one into scarves, then turned two others into ponchos that could double as blankets.  Ruby joined him once she was done picking through the women’s clothes. It took a little finagling and both of them working together, but eventually they managed to create a cloth sling to help them free up their hands while carrying Emma.

They were still investigating their third house of the day when the sun started setting.  Sam went to work covertly barricading all points of access while Ruby painted a few wards in prime locations.  Their dinner consisted of a shared MRE and a can of beans that they had found under a rack full of paint cans. Rather than starting a fire indoors, Ruby cast a spell on some metal kitchen utensils to make them glow hot inside an insulated dish on the floor of a second-floor bedroom.  After dinner, Sam lay down on the floor near the small heat source and fell asleep while Ruby kept watch.

Some time later Sam’s eyes opened with a start.  Ruby was leaning over him with her hand covering his mouth.  He made to get up and ask her what the hell she was doing, but the expression on her face stopped him.  In the moonlight he could see that she was worried. He nodded to her, letting her know that he wouldn’t speak.

She uncovered his mouth, then took his hand and slowly—silently—helped him into a sitting position by the window.  Without sticking her head up, she gestured for him to take a peek. He cautiously looked out the window.

There were at least eight people walking down the road.  They weren’t moving with thoughtful purpose; they were staggering and milling about.  Several of them were covered in fresh blood and two had visibly broken limbs. They were Croats.

Sam looked back to Ruby, who was holding Emma.  He quickly crawled across the floor and put a lid on the pot full of glowing utensils on the off chance that the light might be visible from the street.  Without making a sound, he moved back to Ruby and leaned in so close to whisper in her ear that his lips were almost touching her earlobe.

“They’re Croats.  If we stay quiet, they might just pass by,” he told her.

Ruby immediately pulled one of her breasts out of her dress and tried to get Emma to latch on.  The newborn fussed a little, causing both of them to softly shush her, but after a few seconds she started nursing.

“Are they smart enough to check houses?” Ruby quietly asked him.

“I don’t know.”  He picked up the angel blade.

They sat in the darkness, watching the bedroom door.  With the utensils no longer providing a source of heat, they began getting cold after only a few minutes.  Ruby tried to hold Emma so that she was warm and therefore less likely to start crying, but it felt like a losing battle.  Sam wrapped an arm around Ruby, pulling her to him in an embrace with Emma between them, then draped one of the wool blankets around them in an attempt to keep the newborn warm.  They both tried not to look at each other, though it was made difficult by the fact that their heads were only about six inches apart.

A half hour later they could hear the sound of scratching at the front door.  Straining his ears, Sam thought he could hear the doorknob rattle, but it was locked.  He held his breath, waiting to see if the Croat would try to break down the door or come in a window.  His heart was pounding and adrenaline started making his underfed body shake. He silently prayed that Emma wouldn’t sense the tension in her parents and begin crying.

“If they come, just take her and run,” he whispered to Ruby.  “Head west. I’ll try to stop them.”

“Eight-to-one.”  She looked him in the eyes as she reminded him of the harrowing odds.  “Some look injured. Run with us.” Below the wool blanket he could feel Ruby’s hand grip his shirt.  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

She was asking him to not make some sort of sacrificial play involving blocking the zombie horde with his own body.  Honestly, the thought had crossed his mind. That sort of thing had been second nature to him as a hunter. His job had been to put himself between others and danger.  If he had to die in the process, so be it. But he wasn’t a hunter anymore. He was a father. He’d still die if it meant keeping Emma alive, but she was also relying on him in a much broader sense.  Losing one of the only two people who were caring for her would be catastrophic. Putting his life on the line when they could otherwise run away was no longer the heroic choice; it was just foolhardy.  He solemnly nodded to her. Her hand let go of his shirt, but she didn’t pull away from him. 

The scratching at the front door slowly traveled around the exterior wall of the house.  Every few minutes the windows in the living room or kitchen rattled a bit as a Croat tried to get in, though there wasn’t any shattering of glass.  At dusk Sam had repositioned a heavy wooden bookcase to cover a window that had been broken out long ago. It had been a pain in the ass to move at the time because the bookcase was so heavy, but after listening to the Croats hit and claw at the strong barricade for over a minute before giving up, he was grateful for his earlier effort.  

Eventually, the sounds of casual probing stopped, though neither of them wanted to risk making any noise or illuminating the bedroom they were in.  A door slamming at the neighboring house made Sam jolt slightly from his strained nerves. Emma shifted but didn’t cry out. He covered his face with his hand to hide a few exhausted tears.

Croats could open doors.  They were in a rural neighborhood, not a city or town center.  They explored. This could be bad.

Sam and Ruby waited in the house as long as they could, hoping that the zombies would wander off.  They carefully peeked out of every window for signs of Croats. He couldn’t see them, but there was no way of knowing when they might’ve left, where they might’ve gone, or whether they were lingering in some blind spot.  It was dangerous to go into the unknown, but with the dawn starting to wake Emma up they were continually taking a chance that she would start to fuss or cry. They would have to make a run for it, which meant that they’d have to abandon the slow, heavy cart of supplies.  Sam took a moment to tie their pot and two canteens to his backpack after wrapping all the metal supplies in clothes to muffle the noise.

Ruby held their daughter to her chest, carefully cradling her head as Sam placed his hand on the doorknob to the back patio.  She began making a gentle shushing sound beside Emma’s ear to help distract and soothe her in advance of the sudden action. Sam and Ruby’s eyes met as they prepared to make a break for it.  He tilted his head toward the door and she nodded to him while continuing to hum in Emma’s ear.

Sam opened the door, then ran outside.  He didn’t run at his full speed. Instead he fell back slightly to make sure that Ruby and Emma were safely ahead of him.  He could hear the baby let out agitated grunts at being jostled, but to his relief she didn’t start bawling. His head whipped around, watching for anyone following them, but he didn’t see anyone.  For a second he thought he saw some movement to his left, but it had only been their reflection in a car windshield. They ran about a hundred feet to the tree line of a nearby forest, then hid by some bushes.

Ruby gently rocked Emma, trying to get her to calm down.  The infant’s arms flailed a bit as she huffed. Sam didn’t know what to do, so he softly pet her arm and whispered reassurances to her.  He did his best to run his fingers through her short, fine brown hair, unsure if that sort of thing was soothing for such a young baby.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he quietly told his daughter, a little surprised at himself for giving her a nickname.

Unfazed by his display of affection, Ruby actually kissed the top of Emma’s head while murmuring, “Please don’t cry.”

Emma wriggled for a nerve-wracking minute, but eventually calmed down enough for them to potentially start moving again.

Ruby watched the houses and the road with a new wariness.  “Those things, they’re attracted to civilization, right?”

Sam looked around at their surroundings.  The houses were roughly a hundred feet apart and bordered a small forest.  They weren’t exactly in a suburban setting.

“Yeah, but I guess they kinda wander too.”

“We’re avoiding civilization whenever we can, even the suburbs, even shit like this.”  She turned from the houses and the two-lane street to the woods behind them. “Do you think they stick to the roads?”

“I have no idea.”  Sam looked at the wheeled cart that was holding their two gallon-jugs of water, still sitting in the house.  They wouldn’t be able to bring that with them if they were going offroad and it was too dangerous to limit themselves to traveling along avenues of human civilization.  They needed to be able to travel lighter in order to reduce their exposure to threats. “We better move. We’re gonna need to get to the next river before nightfall. 


	5. Early Spring: Mixed Blessings

Sam examined the large, decrepit tree stump.  After three days traveling cross-country he’d started looking for a very specific sort of tree, which luckily had only taken the better part of a day to find.  He used his knife to stab the stump and pry out a fist-sized hunk of soft, crumbling wood. A few termites scurried around on the piece that he was holding. 

“This’ll do,” he told Ruby.  “Start it up.”

While she got the fire going, he began breaking off pieces of wood and hastily scraping the termites into their cooking pot.  It wasn’t the largest or most appetizing meal, but at least he knew that the small insects were edible and a decent source of protein.  The whole process was tedious work. The little things scrambled everywhere, trying to burrow into any available dark nook they could. Once they were in the pot it was easy enough… except for the ones with wings.  In the end, roughly twenty minutes and a whole lot of cursing later, he’d collected about two cups' worth.

“Enough to make you wish you were a vegetarian,” she commented as he put the pot on the fire.

“I wish I had that luxury,” he replied.

When the sound of soft crackling began coming from the pot he took a spoon and stirred the termites to even out the cooking.  Two of them tried holding onto the spoon, but he knocked it against the edge of the pot, dislodging them.

Ruby pulled one of the MREs from her bag then held her hand out.  Sam wordlessly passed her the knife. She rechecked the number of insects they were cooking before cutting the ration into quarters.  They both looked at their dwindling supply of freeze-dried food, but neither of them brought up the fact that they only had enough for five or six more days left.  She handed him his quarter. When the termites were sufficiently sautéed, he scooped half of it into her small food cup.

Sam gingerly took a bite of the cooked insects.  The texture was awkward as hell, but the flavor almost reminded him of roasted carrots.  “I was not expecting that.”

“Bottoms up,” Ruby told him, then poured some of hers into her mouth.  As she chewed her face contorted slightly on her journey through several confused feelings.  She swallowed, then licked her teeth before saying, “Not impossible, but we need to find some way to get real food.  Eventually we’re gonna run out of trees and unfortunately not all of them are infested.”

He used a finger to prod one of the insects in his bowl to confirm that it was dead, then had a bit more before muttering, “I hadn’t expected to be hoping for a plague of termites.”

“I think locust are edible,” she replied.  “As long as we’re calling down the great plagues we might as well go full ten-of-Egypt.  I mean, we’re already biblical.”

“Keep the locust.  I’d rather have the crops they’re supposed to wipe out.”

“Crops don’t have as much protein,” she countered while picking one last termite from her bowl and eating it.

He tilted his head at her point, then got back to the constructive line of thinking.  “We’ve got knives. Can you teleport up next to some animals and stab them?”

“I can’t teleport,” she replied in a tone that made it clear she thought that that was obvious.

Sam lowered his bowl from his mouth and furrowed his brow.  It was true that in the eleven days that they’d been together he hadn’t seen her teleport, but he’d just assumed that that had been because of some sort of pragmatic decision on her part—that maybe she couldn’t teleport while holding Emma, so that it wasn’t a practical form of retreat or the like.  He hadn’t expected to hear that her powers were somehow impeded. “What?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, then said, “You don’t remember?”  When he shook his head, she explained, “One of his fucking cleric’s great ideas.  They hexed me so that I couldn’t escape. No popping around. I’m grounded.” She tossed her metal cup into the fire to burn out the crumbs.  “Mobility-wise I’m basically a human.”

“You can’t just sneak up and stab someone in the back anymore?”  He tossed his empty bowl into the fire to join hers, then continued, “I know there aren’t many humans left to fuck with, but they should really kick you out of the demon club.”

“Wow.  Really?”  

She looked at him with a surprised expression that confused him.  He wasn’t sure why trading a few jabs would suddenly be a problem for her.  As far as he knew she wasn’t the sort to have thin skin. The thought that he’d crossed some sort of line made him uneasy—and a bit blindsided by the fact that, not only was he no longer intentionally trying to fight with her, he was evidently worried about accidentally provoking her.

“What?” he asked, sincerely at a loss for what he’d done.

“Talking about demons stabbing people in the back.  Way to be a racist.” She actually tsk-tsked him. “You kissing your half-demon daughter with that mouth?”

He started to open his mouth to argue with her, that demons were evil by their nature—it was part of the very composition of the universe.  But he hesitated. Every demon he’d met as a human had been the enemy, but when it came right down to it he wasn’t really sure how he defined evil anymore.  Hell, he wasn’t about to suggest something so naive as the idea that angels were good. Everything was far more complicated than he had originally believed. And regardless of what all the bibles and hunter handbooks said, he couldn’t be talking like that around Emma.  She was part demon, part angel, and as far as they could tell there was some amount of human in there too. He couldn’t describe any of those groups in such broad and dismissive terms, not without risking hurting her.

Sam looked at the two-week-old swaddled and sleeping on Ruby’s lap, then reluctantly said, “You’re right.  No more overly-broad insulting statements. Not about demons, humans, or angels—”

“I never said anything about not insulting angels,” she replied before taking a sip from her canteen, but the curl of the corner of her lips told him that she understood the new universal ban on derogatory talk.

“Insulting  _ specific _ angels is still fine.”

“Good.”  She leaned back and propped herself up with her arms, reclining as best she could with a newborn on her lap.  “I’ve got a long fucking list full of specific angels.”

He nodded to himself while poking the fire with a stick.  “Me too.”

Ruby tilted the head to the side and huffed an unvoiced laugh at a thought.  “Guess we’re our own club now.”

* * *

Sam sat at the base of a tree, taking a break while Ruby readjusted the load in her backpack to be more balanced.  Emma was swaddled and dozing in his lap, leaving him free to kill the idle few minutes. In an attempt to distract himself from his hunger, he picked up a stick from the ground next to him and absentmindedly began dragged it through the loose dirt, drawing random squiggles.  Unfortunately, his mind kept drifting to thoughts of pad thai or a pizza with literally every vegetable topping known to mankind. 

“Stop that,” Ruby told him sharply, seemingly out of nowhere.

He glanced over at her in confusion.  “Stop what?”

“That.”  She pointed at the drawings he was making in the dirt.

Taking a second look at the wiggles and lines he’d be doodling, Sam realized that they seemed to be in a surprisingly tight pattern.  He tilted his head and furrowed his brow at the drawing. It triggered some feeling in him that wasn’t quite fond enough to be nostalgia.

When Ruby saw his puzzled expression she explained, “That part on the left is a potiregere.”

He immediately dropped the stick, unsure what potentially dangerous thing he’d just created.  “A what?”

“Potiregere,” she repeated, unhelpfully.  She rolled her eyes at his ignorance before continuing, “A powered spell symbol.  Normally, they need to be activated, but some of them just go automatically. Most of them, even if you just drop them on a ley line they’ll do—“ Ruby rocked her head from side to side “—something.”

Sam didn’t like that uncertain gesture.  He couldn’t tell whether she lacked confidence in her knowledge or if she just didn’t know how to break the bad news to him.  

“Something?”

She chewed on her cheek for a moment before admitting, “I don’t recognize that one, but most powered symbols can pack a punch.  Worst-case within the realm of possibility: incinerate everything in a five-mile radius.”

Sam hadn’t been smiling by any means, but at her words whatever had been on his face melted into a sickly shock.  “How common are ley lines?”

“Considering that they fuck up more than half the schools of magic, too common.”

He stared at the rune as if it was a live bomb.  “Can you disarm it?”

“It might not actually be explosive by itself,” she replied as she leaned in and examined it.  “It’s just an active spell balled up in a little package. Sometimes those things don’t blow up.”

“You aren’t inspiring a whole lot of confidence.”  He very gingerly picked up his daughter from his lap, then cautiously stood up, taking care not to disrupt the potiregere.  “I’m taking Emma a few hundred feet away and then you’re gonna clean this up.”

She opened her mouth, about ready to argue with being given the chore of cleaning up his mess, but he had already picked up his pack and started walking away.  Before he could get too far she huffed and told him, “If I blow up, you’re gonna fucking sew me back together or I swear to God I will T-1000 your ass.”

He didn’t bother pointing out that their first aid kit didn’t have enough floss in it to repair a dismembered body.  Instead he gave her an awkward thumbs-up over his shoulder while carrying Emma as far as he could while still being able to observe.  He watched Ruby sit in contemplation of the potiregere for several agonizing minutes. He held his breath as she cautiously extended her hand to touch it, but her fingers hesitated a few inches from the ground.  She chewed her lip a bit, then stood up. Part of him expected her to do something as reckless as kicking the dirt in order to undo the spell. Instead she picked up her backpack and their remaining supplies before joining him.

“I’m not touching that thing,” she said while walking past him away from the rune.

“You’re just leaving it there?” he asked.  It felt like a bad idea to just leave a booby trap lying about in the open like that.  “What if it does something?”

“Then I want to be at least a mile away when it does.”  She looked back at him. “I don’t know enough about its subcomponents to know what it does, let alone how to take it apart.  Do you have any memory of what it does?”

He tried recalling the symbol’s meaning, but the context was too fuzzy.  “No.”

“Well, if you want we can stand really far away and try throwing rocks at it like a couple of primates,” she said sarcastically.

Sam considered pointing out that they were primates—well, he was.  He wasn’t sure what zoological order demons fell under. “We don’t want to leave tracks.  How many people are walking around on Earth knowing stuff like that? It’s a red flag.”

She put her hands on her hips and groaned unenthusiastically, clearly processing the fact that he had a point.  “The dirt was loose. With the wind and it raining every once in a while the potiregere probably won’t be legible for more than a few days.  Do you really want to go poke it with a stick? Because I don’t want to die over your PTSD fingerpainting. Can we just leave it?”

He looked back at where the rune was lurking.  Aside from the occasional empty road, there hadn’t been any signs of human civilization for days.  The thought of leaving behind any tracks scared him, but it was dangerous in its own right to try undoing it.  Reluctantly, he adjusted his pack for the long haul, then followed Ruby, earning a nod of approval.

After several minutes of walking in silence while dwelling on the possible bomb he’d accidentally made, an odd thought struck him.  “That thing kinda looked like the symbol that Anna used to throw the angels back to Heaven.”

“Same fundamental school,” Ruby replied.  “That’s probably why Lucifer knows it. It probably dates back to a time when angels were casting more.”  She shrugged. “Well, I guess, you tell me.”

“That makes sense to me, but I don’t know for sure.  All that stuff is in the fog. I couldn’t—”

Ruby suddenly stopped walking.  For a second Sam looked around, frantically looking for some threat, but she quickly said, “The potiregere Anna used knocks angels back into Heaven.”

Sam froze.  She was thinking of adding the spell to their arsenal.  On the surface it seemed like a decent idea, but under a little scrutiny it didn’t hold up.  

“A lot of good that does us,” he told her.  “It just sends the angels back home and they’ll know exactly where we are.”

“Maybe it’s a bad idea for Michael’s flunkies, but what about Lucifer’s loyalists?” she asked.  “Would they throw us to the other side, to Michael? Or do you think they’ll try to stop Heaven from getting their grubby little hands on you first?”

Sam thought on the scenario for a few minutes.  “Our—Lucifer’s angels, they’re committed. They’d die for us—”  He mentally kicked himself for the ambiguous slip. “They’d die for him.  I don’t think they’d give up our location to the enemy.”

“So if we can punt some of Lucifer’s winged dicks straight into Heaven’s clutches, they’ll be killed or what?”  She smiled at the prospect of having yet another way to destroy some of her former captors.

He pursed his lips as he tried to remember whatever he could that might give him some insight into how Heaven might react to Lucifer’s angels being delivered to their front door.  The more he considered Heaven, the more echoes of unpleasant emotions bubbled up inside him. They weren’t his feelings. It was memories of Lucifer’s pain and longing. Past the emotions, or maybe gleaned from them, Sam found some intuition that struck him.  

Fundamentally, the angels were a family, siblings.  Differences aside, when it came down to it, they loved each other.  Maybe there were hurt feelings and resentment. Maybe they might fight or even take their anger out on each other, but killing each other had a profound finality to it.  In general, they’d avoid it except on the battlefield, when it was necessary—though, Lucifer’s definition of necessity may have been more extreme. He was the underdog, after all.  In his own perverse way, he was the one trying to forge his own path far from home. That made him and his side more inclined to take no prisoners. 

There would be no deals or pardons.  There was no capacity for forgiveness, not among such rigid creatures as angels.  But Michael had the luxury of taking his ill-behaved younger siblings and throwing them in an inescapable cage for all eternity rather than ordering their deaths.  Some bitter voice inside Sam whispered ‘coward’ at the thought of the Commander of the Heavenly Host imprisoning his siblings in their very own purgatory. Sam wasn’t entirely sure if the impulse was the leftover opinion of Lucifer, or if the bitter outlook was his own.  The thought sent a haunting chill down his spine. He pushed that from his mind and looked back at Ruby to answer her question.

“I’m guessing that Michael would interrogate any angel prisoners—not that he’d get anything useful out of them—”

“Zealots,” she agreed with his assessment.

“—then he’d probably toss them in a prison cell and throw away the key until the end of the war.”

“So you’re saying that, aside from the angel blade, we have a way of taking angels off the board,” Ruby summarized, then hastily corrected herself.  “Taking Lucifer’s angels off the board.”

“Yeah, well.  I’m pretty sure I can’t recognize every single vessel and their angel’s alignment on sight, so don’t start counting your chickens or—”

Emma cooed softly as she wriggled in Sam’s arms, causing one of her legs to escape the blanket she was wrapped in.  The reminder from their daughter that she was right there made them both grimace slightly. They’d essentially been talking about a weapon against angels without even considering that Emma was half-angel.  His heart sank.

“Do you know how it’d affect her?” Ruby asked, undoubtedly knowing that the rarity of nephilim made it unlikely that he knew the answer.

He shook his head.  There was no clear yes-or-no answer in his mind.  If Lucifer had had any insights they were still lost in the damned fog.  “I have no clue.”

“Fuck,” Ruby muttered as she let out a long sigh, then rewrapped Emma’s leg.  Her hand rested for a moment on the small flannel bundle with something that almost reminded Sam of reverence.  “Alright. Tabling the anti-angel potiregere for now.”

* * *

The next day while auditing their food supplies they agreed that going forward the daily allotment of rations would be only a quarter of a serving.  They supplemented as best they could with insects and the occasional piece of familiar plantlife. The lack of food forced them to slow their pace in order to burn fewer calories.  Both of them understood that they couldn’t stretch their rations any further. 

As things turned more desperate Sam found himself weighing the options of giving up some or all of his portion of their meager food supply in order to make sure that Ruby could keep feeding Emma.  Their daughter’s survival was the priority and when it came right down to it Ruby was the only one that was necessary for that. He was prepared to do whatever it took to keep Emma safe. If that meant starving… well, he felt that after the last few years it would’ve been divine justice and probably a more noble death than he deserved—  But before he could make the suggestion their luck broke.

They were walking parallel to a highway, about thirty feet from the asphalt, right inside the bordering forest’s treeline, when they spotted a large motorhome on the shoulder.  The blocky, tan vehicle had a telling layer of filth on its surface and every tire had gone flat under the strain of its immense weight and the beating sun. 

Sam cautiously approached it, angel blade in hand.  When he tried the side door it was locked. Upon inspection, the cab of the motorhome had been not only locked but also barricaded from the inside.  The paint on the exterior of the recreational vehicle had hundreds or thousands of small scratches and smears of long-dried blood on its paint in little raking patterns—the unmistakable marks of dozens of Croats clawing at it, unable to get inside   With no obvious, imminent threats, Ruby carried Emma over for a better look. They both stared at the giant puzzle box for a moment, trying to figure out how to get inside what certainly appeared to be an unlooted prize.

Ruby pointed to the small window, roughly the size of a cutting board that was probably seven or eight feet off the ground.  “Can you break that glass?”

“Yeah,” he replied, then looked down at her, realizing what she was getting at.  “There’s no way I can climb through that window.”

“That’s why I’m going in.”  

Sam looked between the five-foot-and-change-tall woman beside him and the window that he would have to reach up to touch.  He considered himself to be pretty capable physically, but lifting her that high was asking a lot while he was feeling so weak.  “I don’t think I could pick you up and push you in there. Especially if there’s anything blocking it inside. I just don’t know if I have that kind of stamina at this point.”

Ruby nodded a bit while reassessing the situation.  “Okay. I’m gonna get on your shoulders.”

He wasn’t thrilled by the suggestion that involved any sort of coordination between the two of them.  “You’re gonna climb me?”

The corner of her mouth curled up at what was likely a sexual innuendo that had just floated through her mind.  Sam tilted his head, throwing her an annoyed, knowing bitch-face. To her credit, she let that joke die on the vine.

After making sure that Emma was securely swaddled and safely out of range if Ruby fell, Sam broke the window, carefully clearing out the large shards of glass.  Then they got to the tricky part. He leaned his back against the side of the motorhome for stability, crouched down a bit to give her less height to cover, and interlocked his fingers, creating a step for her.  She rested her fingertips on his shoulder to steady herself before placing her left foot into his hands. They looked at each other for a moment before Ruby nodded that she was ready.

Sam hoisted her up.  She awkwardly wobbled for a second while groping the side of the motorhome, trying to find her balance.  He had to lean his head back slightly in order to not get hit in the face by her knee. She placed her right foot onto his left shoulder as she tossed a rag over the frame of the broken window and gripped its edge.  For an uncomfortable moment her crotch was only a couple inches from his face, but she quickly pulled herself up and secured her footing on his shoulders. He grabbed her ankles to try stabilizing her, then reflexively glanced up to make sure she wasn’t about to tip backwards and fall.  

His eyes shot back down to stare straight ahead as soon as he saw that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.  For a moment his brain was filled with static, but after recovering from the surprise he realized that she’d fled Lucifer’s estate immediately after giving birth—why would she have had underwear?  The thought that she had been walking around in little more than a dirty gown and a jacket for the last two weeks left him feeling more pity than arousal.

While he was distracted, she had pulled herself partway through the small window.  Her legs flailed a bit as she tried to find enough leverage to push her lower half inside.  He reached up, grabbed her feet and gave her the best shove he could manage from the odd angle.  She tumbled inside with a loud thud that made Sam wince slightly.

She coughed, then groaned, “Ah, fuck.”

“You okay?” he asked despite having no idea how to help her if something was wrong.

“It’s just the smell,” she replied while breaking out four other small windows. 

He could hear some shuffling around inside before the unmistakable sound of gagging.  The thought of her losing whatever limited food was in her stomach made him start to regret their decision to investigate, though he would’ve been surprised if anything other than stomach acid had come up.  Losing one’s lunch required the previous consumption of said lunch. Vomiting or not, it was too late now. 

He pursed his lips, knowing perfectly well that dead bodies left some of the worst odors.  Sure enough, when Ruby unlocked and opened the motorhome’s door he smelled ripe corpses.

“Tag team with one of us staying outside with Emma?” Sam suggested.

She stepped out of the vehicle, literally tagging his hand while moving around him, “Have fun.”

Despite not really wanting to go inside, he had to admit that she’d earned a break.  He took a few last breaths of fresh air then held his shirt over his nose and mouth. The air even felt stale on his skin.  Fuck, he missed showers.

Inside the motorhome there were three bodies near a little booth-and-table dining area.  Two of the corpses were slumped at the table while the third had collapsed to the floor. It was hard to be sure, but based on their clothes and shoes they all appeared to be men.  Sam didn’t attempt to pick their bodies clean for new clothing. They were still too juicy. 

While checking below the table to see what kind of shoes they were wearing, he saw a hunting rifle.  One of the men in the booth had dropped it, butt-side down, to the floor below the table. Sam leaned in, grabbed the gun, then checked to see how many bullets were left in the magazine.

“There’s a rifle!” Sam shouted to Ruby.

“No fucking way.”  She peeked her head in the doorway to see.

“Only three shots left.”

“Did you check them for extra magazines?”

It did seem unusual for someone to have a weapon with so little ammunition—they hadn’t even been traveling light like him and Ruby.  They were in a tiny house on wheels. He started examining the corpses with a little more enthusiasm. After gingerly checking their pockets he determined that there wasn’t any additional ammunition on them.  However, he did make an interesting discovery. All of the men were missing parts of the back of their heads. He looked at the rifle, the previously-barricaded motorhome, and their injuries.

“They killed themselves.”

“Maybe they just couldn’t take it anymore,” Ruby suggested.

As they continued searching the vehicle for supplies the bleak picture became clearer.  Blankets were crumpled below the corpses, having been held until their deaths and then dropped.  A calendar on the wall displayed the month of December. But the most telling discovery was the fact that there wasn’t any food in the entire place.  When the weather had gotten too cold they’d run out of food and took their own lives.

It was currently approximately early spring.  The weather was cool, though hopefully beyond the risk of freezing temperatures.  Resources like animals and edible plants would continue to increase for a time, but eventually the weather would turn cold again and things would become dire.  They couldn’t underestimate the threat that winter might pose—if they made it that long.

While searching the diminutive bedroom, Sam noticed that the mattress was at a slight angle, having been unseated from the frame.  He grabbed the mattress and lifted it up to find a locker-sized compartment. Inside there were four hundred-cartridge boxes of ammunition, a compound bow, and a quiver containing a dozen or so arrows.

“We’ve got ammo!” he shouted to Ruby in his excitement.

He started gathering boxes of ammunition, barely worrying about their weight.  If it meant that they could start hunting for food an extra couple pounds of supplies would be a negligible cost.  When he brought the rifle and ammunition outside he leaned the gun against the motorhome for a moment to begin figuring out how to repack their bags.  But his eye didn’t even reach his pack; they were stuck lingering on the scratches in the vehicle’s paint. The rifle’s previous owners had been swarmed by Croats… Croats that had been drawn by something.

Sam sat down on the asphalt, rubbed his neck, then let out an exasperated sigh.

“Fucking hell.  I know that look,” Ruby muttered.  “I take it we’ve got a problem?”

“The rifle is a trap,” he replied.  “It’s too loud. Maybe it’d be great for someone else, but we’re hiding, from Croats, Lucifer, Michael—”  He gestured at his visibly inhuman daughter. “—even humans. If we start shooting with that anyone in earshot will know there’s someone out there.  We’ll attract too much attention.”

Her expression turned to disappoint as she processed his point to find that it checked out.  “It’s a weapon of last resort, but we’d be dumb to leave it here. We won’t take a ton of bullets, just two magazines.”

While some people might have considered twenty bullets a small number, especially considering that they weren’t reusable the same way an arrow could be, he thought that sounded a bit excessive.  “If we’re really in a situation where we need to use the rifle do you really think we’ll have the time or ability to reload?”

She smiled down at him.  “If nothing else I’m an optimist.”

He blinked at her, then tilted his head.  “Okay. I will give you that.” 

After fully scavenging the motorhome and refilling their packs it was decided that Ruby would carry the rifle secured to her pack while Sam would take the bow and arrows, keeping them at the ready for use, whether that be for hunting or defense.  Unfortunately, Sam couldn’t use the bow and arrow while Emma was slung across his chest because it would risk hitting her with the string when he fired, so Ruby took on the primary responsibility of carrying the baby while they traveled. He missed having his daughter so close, though lessening his load by roughly nine pounds would probably help his chronic backaches.

When he was done donning the bow and quiver Ruby stared at him for a few seconds and let out a hum of approval.  “You actually look like you know what you’re doing.”

His lips thinned at both the implication that she thought he might not know what he was doing and that she might be sizing him up in a sexual way, even jokingly.  He wasn’t in the mood for her to be mocking him, false-gawking or otherwise.

“This might surprise you, but I’m not completely inept without a gun,” he replied.

She tightened a strap on her backpack, then said, “Teasing aside, I’m pretty sure you’re the most capable human I’ve ever known.”

“Capable of destruction,” he muttered.

“Take the damn compliment.  You want to do something other than destruction?”  Ruby held up their daughter. “In a couple months she’ll be able to laugh.  Bring your fucking A-game: goofy faces, blowing raspberries on her stomach, and don’t forget the puns—”

A perplexed smirk crept across his face.  “Somehow I don’t think puns are gonna be particularly effective on an infant.”

“You’re allowed to make me laugh too,” she told him.  She returned Emma to her sling, then started leading the way down the highway in the same direction they’d been headed.  “If we're in this together we need to find a way to get along. We’re allowed to do that again.” 


	6. Early Spring: The Other

With the addition of the bow and arrow to their collection of tools they were finally able to regularly replenish their food supply through hunting.  And, to both of their relief, bugs were largely taken off the menu. The new supply of protein gave them more strength and stamina, which generally improved their moods as an added bonus.  It was considerably easier to avoid verbally sparring with Ruby when they both had periodically full bellies. In fact, every once in a while he would find that they were having civil, dare he say friendly, conversations while starved for entertainment on their long hikes.

Despite their gradually growing rapport, it was normal for them to go for hours without speaking.  Sam was silently trying to decide which novel most accurately paralleled their own journey—maybe  _ The Gunslinger _ , assuming they weren’t the heroes of the story—when Emma began whimpering.

“Hey, no,” Ruby told the newborn in a soft voice.  “Come on. Keep it together. You hungry?”

She tried offering Emma a nipple, but the baby wasn’t interested.

As their daughter started crying, Sam pulled an arrow from his quiver and readied his bow.  He watched for signs that her wailing might’ve attracted Croats. Every time she cried, they had to ready themselves for a fight.

They weren’t far from a highway that they’d been using for a landmark.  The wooded area that they were passing through wasn’t very densely packed with trees, but there were enough to provide hiding places and create an unnerving number of objects in one’s peripheral vision.  Their proximity to the road meant that every once in a while there was a shed or small building nestled among the trees. One such shed was located a few dozen yards away.

“Is someone there?” called out a voice from behind the decrepit shed.

“We’re human,” Sam shouted in an attempt to prevent any Good Samaritans from trying to save a baby.

Ruby held Emma to her, carefully positioning her so that the baby’s inhuman eyes weren’t visible.  If anyone got a good look at their daughter they’d immediately know that she was unusual. The blackness was an overwhelmingly demonic feature, which was justification enough to make her the target of many people, but the golden wisps where her irises would be brought it to an all new level.  That was the sort of intel that could easily be sold to any number of interested parties.

A lanky man with pale skin and short strawberry-blonde hair peeked out from his hiding place.  He was wearing an oversized, brown winter jacket and dusty jeans. A moderately-sized backpack adorned with a canteen and several small cloth bags was on his back.  There was a knife on his belt—his hand was resting on the hilt, but when he saw that Sam had a ranged weapon he raised his hands in a gesture of non-hostility.

“Jesus, I haven’t seen another human in weeks,” he said as he took a step forward.

Sam pointedly readied the arrow, then told him, “Don’t come any closer.”

“What?” he asked, confused by the abrupt warning.

“I said don’t come any closer,” Sam repeated.  He didn’t dare take his eyes off the man, but he trusted that Ruby was looking around for any other threats.  

The man stared at them in disbelief.  “We can work together.”

Sam raised his bow and arrow at the man, then told him, “It’s nothing personal, but we don’t want anyone coming anywhere near our kid.”

The guy held his arms out, hands opening and closing in exasperation.  He was clearly trying to process Sam’s threatening yet perfectly reasonable reaction.  “I’m not gonna do anything.“ As he spoke he shifted his weight from foot to foot in a way that inadvertently caused him to take a few small steps forward.

“Stay back or I will shoot you.”  Sam tried to keep his tone and expression as unreadable as possible in order to avoid seeming either uncommitted or overly hostile.  “Let’s just part ways and good luck to you.”

“I’ll die out here by myself,” the man said, almost begging.

“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t change anything.”  Sam tilted his head to indicate Ruby. “We have responsibilities and you aren’t one of them.  You’ve survived this long. Maybe you’ll meet someone else who doesn’t have a kid to protect.”

The man didn’t move.  His lips thinned briefly as his eyes flicked between the weapon being pointed at him and the baby.  He chewed his cheek for a second or two. There was visible tension in his body, maybe just from being threatened… or he might’ve also been sizing up the possibility of a fight.

For a moment Sam considered the fact that with his ranged weapon and a good ten strides between them, he could probably kill the man without too much risk.  The guy was carrying a knife and a backpack that contained potentially valuable supplies. In the grand scheme of things, those resources might have been worth a little blood on his hands—but he was tired of death.  He didn’t want to murder anyone ever again.

When the man began slowly backing away, Sam felt some of the tightness in his chest lessen, though he didn’t relax his aim.  The muscles in his arm were starting to burn from the strain, but he kept steady, trying to not show weakness. Eventually the man turned and ran into the more thickly wooded part of the forest.  Sam lowered the bow, but losing sight of the man among the trees left him feeling uneasy.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Ruby quietly told him.

They hiked at twice their usual pace in the opposite direction from where the man had headed.  Every few minutes Sam compulsively glanced over his shoulder to see if they were being pursued.  Unfortunately, in order to avoid an obvious path like following the highway, they had to venture into another section of forest where there were plenty of trees and shrubbery around that could’ve been providing cover.  They pressed on as long as they could without breaking, and only stopped when it was too dark for Sam to see the random tree roots sticking up from the ground.

Their camp was hastily made and barely unpacked so that they could quickly gather it if they needed to run.  Ruby didn’t start a fire nor cast the warming spell on any rocks for fear that it would attract attention. Instead she huddled under the heavy wool blankets with Sam and Emma, attempting to contribute her body heat to the mix.

Sam could barely sleep.  Every sound in the darkness caught his attention, conjuring the image of someone coming to kill them and take their equipment.  He tried to position Emma so that she was nestled between his and Ruby’s bodies to keep her warm, but also to make her less of a target in a surprise attack.

It hadn’t occurred to him how terrifying it would be to interact with another human.  Some primitive, tribalistic instinct had led him to believe that seeing a human wouldn’t be nearly as big a danger as a demon or angel.  In some ways he supposed it was true. Humans couldn’t teleport or send the intel up a chain of command. That being said, humans were also fighting for survival and should be expected to murder for any advantage possible.

Eventually exhaustion overtook his fear, causing him to fall asleep.  Despite knowing that Ruby was watching over them, he still had anxious, troubled dreams.  It was a confusing collection of memories and made up images.

 

_ He was being hunted.  Back before everything had gone wrong, he was trying to lose a tail in a crowded farmers market in Philadelphia.  He’d thought it was a hunter following him, another one that was pissed about him freeing Lucifer, but he was wrong.  The pursuer was a demon… and he’d accidentally led it into a crowd of civilians. There was screaming behind him and people started panicking.  The demon’s cloud poured out of its meatsuit, then wove through the mob, starting a stampede. He wanted to help, but there was too much momentum and the screams of the crowd drowned out his exorcism— _

 

“Sam.”  Ruby’s voice pulled him from the unpleasant dream.  “Take Emma,” she said as she subtly handed off the baby.

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s out there.”  She silently crawled out from under the blankets and grabbed the angel blade.  “I’ll be right back.”

She slipped away into the shadows, leaving Sam in the middle of the dark woods.  He immediately grabbed the spare utility knife from his bag and strained his ears.  All he could hear was the humming and chirping of insects, but between the ambient sounds of the night he kept wondering if he was catching the crunch of a foot stepping through the fallen leaves on the forest floor.  

He couldn’t decide whether it made more sense to lay Emma on the sleeping mat or to continue holding her to his chest.  There was value in having both of his hands free to fight if needed, but he was terrified of putting her down. It was almost a new moon and he could barely see the silhouette of the trees in the faint moonlight.  The thought of putting his daughter down into darkness felt too much like losing her to the whole twisted world. Instead he held her close and kissed the top of her head. He could feel her hand clutch the collar of his shirt as she snuggled against him.  He quietly shushed her, hoping to keep her from babbling or crying. 

His ears struggled to catch any sounds over his own attempts to keep Emma quiet.  He wasn’t sure how long Ruby had been gone, but he hadn’t heard anything. His eyes scanned the nearly pitch black scene and he almost held his breath hoping he wouldn’t see the telltale flicker of orange light that marked a demon being killed.  

Suddenly, there was rustling in the bushes about eighty feet off.  Several small branches snapped and a few grunts were audible. There was the distinct, dull thud of a body falling to the ground.  

After a few minutes Ruby walked out, covered in blood.  She dropped a newly-acquired backpack, canteen, hunting knife, and jacket on the ground next to him.  He could feel a still-wet patch of blood on the jacket.

Sam looked up at her and asked, “Was he actually human?”

“Would it make you feel better if I said no?”

He sighed, then reluctantly examined the jacket to see if it might fit him.

“You warned him and he didn’t back off,” she suggested to mitigate his guilt.  “We did everything we could.”

“I know.  It’s just… we aren’t gonna be able to trust anyone ever again.”

No matter the circumstances of any future encounters with survivors, it’d be some variation on what had just happened.  They couldn’t allow strangers anywhere near Emma. The risks were just too high.

“Maybe when she’s older she’ll be able to hide her eyes somehow,” Ruby speculated.

She was talking about a possibility years in the future.  That wasn’t really the kind of thing he believed in anymore.  Even if they did manage to survive for several years, what would be left of the rest of humanity?  He wasn’t sure if he’d still want human company at that point or if he’d be completely desocialized by then.

Ruby undoubtedly knew that just as well as him, but she’d given the weak reassurance in spite of it.  She was trying to cheer him up, or at least reduce the harm. He appreciated the intent regardless of its ineffectiveness.

* * *

A few days later they were following a man-made reservoir away from what the highway signs had indicated was a fairly large suburban area.  The waterway not only provided the much-needed resource, but it also acted as a landmark for navigating and seemed likely to intersect other roads.  They were still only vaguely aware of where they were at any given time. 

After tearing all the angels from their vessels Ruby had gotten them the hell out of dodge.  Sam had assumed that she’d merely stuffed him into a car and sped away from the estate, but under even just a little scrutiny that hadn’t held up.  He couldn’t remember exactly where Lucifer’s estate had been, but he was pretty sure it had been warmer and more humid than wherever he’d woken up in the station wagon.  Also, why would there be an ugly station wagon anywhere near the archangel’s elegant mansion? And of course, if Ruby was literally just driving away, how much time would it have really taken for the demon guards surrounding the estate to locate her?

It turned out that Ruby had extracted a little good old-fashioned revenge on her way out.  On a few occasions, while pregnant, she had been taken to the estate’s arcana lab in order to have some observational studies run on her.  She’d struck up a false comradery with the angelic clerics that ran the lab, allowing her to learn about the resources they had and even to sleight-of-hand a few small reagents back to her room.  After clearing the surrounding fifty miles of angels with her divine banishment mega-bomb, she’d taken Emma and Sam to the lab. 

Listening to her describe it, her efforts were a well-organized plan, though he was pretty sure that her suicide mission had involved a certain amount of improvisation.  Either way, rather than going out the front door, she’d used a teleportation spell to get them dropped somewhere in central North America. Apparently rigging the lab to explode had been something of a last minute stroke of genius, but the cathartic act had probably helped cover their tracks.  It’d been roughly three weeks and their pursuers still hadn’t located them. Every little bit of confusion was probably helping. Unfortunately, they were left a bit confused themselves. 

When skirting the highways they would see mile marker signs a couple times a day, which would list off the distance to cities, towns, and streets, but that wasn’t actually as helpful as it had initially seemed.  How many fucking cities in the United States were named Lincoln? The whole thing was made worse by the fact that whenever they traveled cross-country there wasn’t a good way of telling if they’d crossed from one state into another.  In a very real way it didn’t matter where they were as long as there were water and animals for hunting ahead of them. It would just help to have some idea if they were about to wander into Death Valley or the like.

Sam spotted a peaceful, grassy, wooded area up ahead that seemed like a good place to rest for a few minutes.  They usually tried to avoid frequent stops, but their last meal wasn’t quite sitting well with him. When they reached the pleasant stopping place he asked, “Can we take a break?”

“Sure.”  She pulled her canteen from her bag, opened it and took a sip.  “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he answered while dropping his supplies and started looking around for a nicely-secluded area.  “Can you give me a little time alone?”

Ruby started taking her own pack off.  Without looking up she asked, “Are you gonna jerk off or take a shit?”

He sighed, then replied, “Well, now I’m not going to do either.”

“Come on.  We’re both adults.”  She put her hands on her hips.  “I sit next to you each night. I know you haven’t jerked off—unless you’re suddenly the world’s quietest climaxer.”

He could feel himself turning red.  “Oh my god, shut up. I don’t want to talk to you about my sex life—” he wasn’t sure that his lack of anything even remotely resembling sex counted as a sex life “—or whatever.  Anyway, so what if I’m gonna go take a shit or something else? If I ask for you to leave me alone just leave me alone. What’s it matter to you?”

She tilted her head from side to side acknowledging his point.  “I was just thinking if you’re jerking off you probably don’t want to hear me singing to Emma—I mean, I just assume you’re not into—“

“Jesus, stop.”

“I’m probably not wrong though.”  She gave him a little shrug. 

He rolled his eyes, then flounced about slightly in a silent concession that she was right on that point at least.  Trying to masturbate while listening to her interacting with Emma would probably be an unwelcome distraction.

“Listen, you don’t have to be a saint,” she continued.  “If you need some _quiet_ _time_ just let me know and I’ll take Emma for a walk—and don’t think I’m not gonna take a turn occasionally too.  I could use a little stress relief every once in a while.”

Sam rubbed his face, thoroughly embarrassed, though it was kind of nice to just have it dealt with.  He hadn’t been planning on masturbating before, but now it was definitely at the bottom of his to-do list.

Two days later Ruby handed him Emma, then explained that she was gonna take a little quiet time.  It took him a few seconds to realize what she was about to do. His ears must’ve turned pink when he put two and two together because she had grinned slightly at his expression.  She walked about fifty yards away to a grassy area that was shaded by some trees. He turned his back to her and tried to focus on playing with the baby, but his mind kept drifting off to the thought of Ruby touching herself.

That night he took his turn.  After putting some distance between himself and the camp he leaned with his back against a tree.  It was a bit colder out than he would’ve liked and he didn’t have any lube, but he made due. He tried to focus on any number of women he’d met or admired over the years, yet the same image crept into his thoughts over and over again.  For the first time in subjective years he came, and it was to the thought of Ruby lying in the soft grass, legs spread, playing with herself. As soon as he was finished he wanted to take a cold shower, but that wasn’t in the cards. 

Instead he returned to their little campsite and tried to distract himself by attempting to repair a short-range radio while listening to Ruby tell their daughter the legend of Nyami Nyami.  It was hard for him to focus on what he was doing. He wasn’t thrilled by the idea that he’d masturbated to her, though he supposed it wasn’t far-fetched considering they used to sleep together.  Mostly he just didn’t like the idea of giving their relationship any more facets. They were reaching the point where they weren’t actively fighting and were generally cooperative. Going beyond that into even just physical attraction was unsettling.  But the thing about that night that really unnerved him was when he caught himself sincerely smiling at Ruby telling her story.

* * *

Sam was seated in the middle of the road next to a handful of abandoned cars examining a shoe’s size by holding it sole-to-sole with his own.  After more than three weeks of searching, he’d finally found the corpse of a man that was close to his own size. The clothes were ruined from all the filth that had gotten on them as the man had decayed and been picked clean by bugs.  The shoes were unfortunately barely any better, though their dark brown color helped hide the unpleasant stains. He tried to console himself by remembering that most of the biological matter had been eaten and what was left was hopefully only things too synthetic for flies or ants to eat.

He gingerly took off the overly-firm dress shoes he was wearing, then removed his socks to assess the damage.  Despite having thick socks, Lucifer’s shoes hadn’t been designed for cross-country hiking and had hurt like hell.  Each foot was calloused or blistered in multiple places. He was damn lucky that none of the small sores had become infected.  The whole thing had slowed their pace, making him all the more grateful for another pair of shoes. With a little care he put his socks back on, then tried out his new shoes.

“Jackpot!” Ruby exclaimed from another vehicle about twenty feet away.

“Food?”

“Better,” she replied, then amended, “sort of.”

She crawled out of the minivan, carefully holding Emma in her sling, then walked over to where he was sitting on the road.

“We’ve got maps.”  She held out three folded paper maps depicting the better part of six states.

Sam’s mouth curled into a broad grin.  If he’d been standing he could’ve hugged her in his excitement.  The thought made him fluster a bit, but he was too eager to see the maps for him to dwell on the awkward impulse.

He finished tying his new shoes, then they went and sat down in the shadow that the minivan was casting on the asphalt.  It was time for them to try to figure out where the hell they were. The process would involve a lot of piecing together the names of signs they’d seen over the course of a month, combined with identifying landmarks such as rivers or forests.  There was a reasonable chance that the maps might not even be useful until they found another mile marker listing multiple cities, from which they could reverse engineer their approximate location.

“Tell me you remember something,” she said as she handed him the maps.

On some level the maps were familiar from all the years of hunting with his dad and brother, but independent of that there was something more.  He spread the first map out on the cold ground, then studied it for a long while, occasionally comparing notes with Ruby. It probably took them almost an hour to sort through the maps, but they eventually narrowed their location to somewhere in a few adjacent counties in Arkansas.  They’d need to find a landmark in order to figure out their exact location, but at least they could start getting a vague sense of their surroundings.

Sam’s fingertips traced the roads and highways north of them from town to town as he absentmindedly muttered, “We know this.”  He began pointing to numerous towns. “These are all wiped out. We sent two of the Knights, each with a battalion, to cut through that area.”

Ruby raised an eyebrow at him.  “Two Knights of Hell and over a thousand demons?  Were they going after something valuable?”

He could see that she was wondering if there was some reason for them to head in that direction like a long lost magical weapon.  Unfortunately, there weren’t any tidbits in his memories that indicated a treasure hunt. He remembered something about looking for specific humans and ordering that they be killed on sight.  The exact timing of the memory wasn’t clear, but the mission had been completed—or at least the recollection of ordering the mission seemed linked to a different memory of having five severed heads presented to him as gifts.

Sam took a moment to let the nausea pass, then replied, “I think they were going after people, not something we could use.”

Her shoulders slumped slightly at the news.  “Think there’s anything worth scavenging or do you think they’re at risk for Croats setting up shop?”

“Most of them were burned.  The rest… I’m not sure how safe they are.”  His brow furrowed. “We can skirt the smallest ones that are farthest from cities if we need to.”

“God, I wish I had a beer to celebrate with.”

“Seconded,” Sam agreed, then reconsidered his current physical state.  He’d lost a noticeable amount of weight and hadn’t indulged in even a relatively tame chemical high like caffeine in weeks—or years depending on how one counted it.  “Well, one beer might lay me out at this point.”

Ruby tilted her head at his point.  “If there’s one thing the Apocalypse is good for it’s making cheap dates.”


	7. Spring: En Passant

They fell into something of a routine:  at daybreak Sam would wake up and they would pack up their camp.  Then they would travel in search of more resources. If they managed to find a decent supply of food and relatively safe shelter, they might stay in a single place for two nights, but it was less common than they would’ve liked.  They had to walk almost everywhere they went, which meant that they were often exhausted after the long days. 

When they were near enough animals, they would break occasionally for Sam to go hunting.  In the evenings they would take turns cooking and Ruby would tell Emma different bits of folklore that she’d picked up over her centuries of life.  Sam had to admit that he enjoyed listening to the stories. She was a surprisingly good storyteller, which was sincerely appreciated since she was his primary source of entertainment.  It hadn’t occurred to him that she might be entertaining. Back when they were hunting Lilith they had hardly interacted except for training, sex, and when he drank blood from her. When it came right down to it they had barely even known each other.

Occasionally, when Ruby was needing a break from narration, Sam would regale the two women in his life with his own stories:  tales from hunts, lore that he’d studied, and once or twice a story stolen from Lucifer’s pool of knowledge. He enjoyed whenever he could tell Ruby something she didn’t know and he felt a little pride whenever he was clever enough to make her laugh.

When they were both too tired to continue with stories, they would put Emma to bed in an improvised bassinet made out of a padded backpack.  Once she was taken care of, Sam would stretch out on his sleeping mat and curl up under his wool blanket. Ruby usually sat or lay nearby, playing lookout.  For the first few weeks the night sky was predominantly overcast, with the occasional rainstorm. 

After the first miserable night caught outside in the rain, huddled around Emma, trying to keep her as dry and warm as possible, they had made a concerted effort to find something akin to a tent.  The best they could manage was a plastic tarp that could be secured to a tree or a fence. From then on, during wet, cold days, they would take a little time each dusk to improvise some temporary shelter.  But eventually the season began to turn as they escaped early-to-mid spring, bringing with it clearer skies, allowing him to fall asleep under a canopy of stars.

* * *

They were walking through a thinly wooded area that didn’t quite qualify as a forest.  Sam was taking point, as usual, with his bow in hand, ready at the first sign of threat or prey.  During the long wordless stretches, he would glance back at Ruby and Emma every few minutes to double check on them.

When Emma let out a little squeak noise, he stopped and turned around to look back at her.  Ruby closed the couple of yards distance between them until she was standing next to him, so that he could see that their daughter was fine.  He took a moment to tickle the infant’s chin while Ruby readjusted the sling. In his peripheral vision he saw Ruby’s body tense. Her concerned expression was a blur as he spun around, readying his bow.

There wasn’t anyone behind him.  For a moment he was about to ask her what was wrong, then he saw it.  About forty feet away there was a small skeleton lying in the dirt and decaying leaves.  He lowered his bow, then slowly walked towards the body. It had been a kid. Based on the positioning of the body and the crushed vertebrae around mid-back, the child had been crawling before….  Sam looked at the size of his shoe compared to the section of broken spine. Something with considerable strength—-an angel or demon—had stomped on the kid.

He took a few steps in the direction where the child had been crawling from.  There were three more skeletons: two adults and an infant. One of the adult’s skull had been crushed, the other’s neck had been snapped, and the baby… the baby’s skeleton was just on the ground, probably left to die at its own agonizing pace.  

A few leaves crunched under Ruby’s footsteps as she approached him.  He looked to her and saw his daughter dozing peacefully. His brain turned to static as his gaze returned to the tiny skeleton in front of him.  He lowered himself to his knees, dropped the bow, then sat down.

He stared at the skeletons of what had been a family.  To his surprise he didn’t cry at the sight of them. He felt bad, but in a very real way he’d run out of tears.  There were so many dead people in the world, dozens or hundreds of which they’d seen strewn about over the last five weeks.  If he’d cried for everyone he’d have died of dehydration long ago. The thought that he’d become so jaded, that that was his new reality, was crushing.  He covered his face with his hands for a moment before pulling his knees up to his chest.

“Sam,” Ruby said as she knelt down to check on him. 

He didn’t turn to look at her, but he could feel her petite hand touch his upper arm.  She leaned into his field of view to examine his face. Her eyes lacked their usual confidence.  She lightly touched his cheeks and forehead, undoubtedly checking him for shock. He didn’t bother trying to reassure her or explaining—he didn’t even bother trying to pull away.  

“Sam, talk to me,” she told him.  In an attempt to give him some comfort she handed him their daughter, which was bittersweet.  When he didn’t respond for several seconds, she added in a particularly exhausted voice, “Please.”

He didn’t blame her for being worried about him.  Over their time together he’d been gradually improving.  His nightmares weren’t as intense. His depression seemed to be having less and less power over him.  He had started smiling and laughing, even going so far as to make a joke here or there. It had appeared that he was out of the woods, so to speak, but the sight of the dead children….  

It had scratched at a wound that had never really healed.  His guilt still lingered, too often pushed aside out of necessity.  But now that they were finally starting to get into a rhythm, now that they weren’t constantly on the brink of starvation or trying to figure out how to build a tent, he was comfortable enough again to let the shame begin eating at him anew.

She was watching him expectantly, waiting for some sort of explanation of what was wrong.  He wasn’t entirely comfortable having a heart-to-heart with her, eviscerating himself and laying his innermost feelings out before her.  Yet they relied on each other and in a very real way she’d need to know how bad the damage was. In the end he convinced himself to at least give her something, even if he could only manage a few words.

“I ruined everything.  I destroyed the world and unleashed all of this on innocent people,” he whispered.  “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Ruby shifted so that she was sitting on the dirt between him and the bodies, blocking the worst of it from view.  She looked down at her knees and leaned her head back in a silent groan before muttering, “Fuck, only you can make me feel this shitty.”

The self-pitying statement confused him enough that for a moment his guilt was replaced by mild annoyance that she was blaming him for something.  He didn’t understand what he’d done now. His brow furrowed, but the rest of him must’ve continued to convey his defeat. “What are you talking about?” 

“I feel bad.”  She waved her arm around as if erasing the beginning of her explanation to start again.  “I fucked up. We both know that. It’s a fact and that’s just this thing to deal with—we live.  We try to move on. I don’t feel bad about the world. Yeah, maybe I regret it but it doesn’t hurt the same way.”  Her eyes met his and they seemed nearly vulnerable. “I helped make you feel this way. You really were my friend, the only one I had.  And I didn’t”—she gestured, alluding to putting pieces together—“I didn’t do the thing I should’ve. I didn’t protect— No. I didn’t trust or respect you.  I fucked you over because I thought I was right, and I was completely fucking wrong.”

He didn’t move at all, truly shocked.  As far as he could recall he’d never heard Ruby admit to being at fault for anything before.  More than that, she thought she’d screwed things up by not respecting him. Before the Apocalypse they’d worked together, but when push came to shove she’d held his leash.  Now they were working as partners in theory, but they were still trying to rebuild the trust necessary to actually be equals.

“I know you probably think I’m a monster.  Hell, I am one, on all fronts.” She took a moment to compose herself, then said, “I’m sorry.”  She swallowed what sounded like some tightness in her throat, then quietly added, “I know it doesn’t change anything….“

He looked down at their daughter.  She stretched in his arms, let out a tiny yawn, then opened her eyes.  Those inhuman black orbs staring back at him had come from Ruby. To nearly everyone in the world they made her a monster.  He didn’t want Ruby to be a monster. He didn’t want to leave her trapped, unable to better things between them. They were trying to be equals, for their daughter’s sake.  That meant allowing Ruby to redeem herself, at least to him. She’d said she was sorry, and God he wanted it to be true.

“Maybe it doesn’t change anything out there,” he replied.  “But here, between us, it helps.”

They sat there in the dirt in silence.  In some ways the moment of shared vulnerability was unwelcome, probably for both of them, yet at the same time Sam felt a strange sort of relief.  It had been so long since he’d let down his guard and even longer since he’d received any sort of recognition, if not exactly forgiveness, and—-dare he imagine—support.  He didn’t really want that comfort to come from Ruby, but these were dire times… and if he was really honest with himself her being a part of his life was bothering him less and less.  The apology had really struck him, more than he was even truly processing. He’d been drowning, swallowing his struggles for so long, a desperate piece of him wanted to believe he could actually confide in her, that maybe, despite everything that had happened, on some level they really were friends.

After a long while he summoned some strength and confessed, “I just… I look at what we did, what I made possible—“  He pursed his lips, trying to get the words out. “—I don’t get why I’m…. Why do I get to live and everyone else….”

“Are you thinking about killing yourself?" she asked with a directness that he appreciated.  

At least she wasn’t treating him like he was made of glass or that the subject was too horrific for them to actually bring up.  On more than one occasion throughout his life, he’d considered suicide, and the way that everyone he knew had tiptoed around it had given it even more of a stigma.  The impulse to end it had been very difficult to resist after releasing Lucifer, but when the archangel had threatened to simply resurrect him he knew that that wasn’t the answer for so many reasons.

"Thinking, just that."  He sighed. "That won't end it.  He'd just find my soul and bring me back.  That won't fix anything either."

He wasn't sure how he felt about it.  Rationally he knew that taking his own life would mean exposing himself to recapture by Lucifer, being imprisoned and almost certainly tortured until he submitted again.  But his despair, while wholly justified, wasn't something so easily tamed as rational thought. It was a gnawing guilt that consumed him in the middle of the silent, dark nights when he was alone with what he had done. He had managed to survive his failure—a failure that had claimed so many innocent lives.  As far as he was concerned he deserved to die, but it wouldn't end the pain. It wouldn't undo the past. It would only endanger his daughter.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do," he admitted, a little surprised by his own candidness. He might not have been seriously considering suicide, but he was still lost in his pain.

“She needs you.  I’m sorry, but neither of us gets to tap out.”

"I know."  He took a deep breath.  "I'm not going anywhere.  I’m not giving up.”

He felt profoundly helpless, intimately knowing the pieces that he’d help put in motion.  His mistake had gained momentum into something so destructive that he couldn’t control it.  Placing himself defiantly in its path would crush him, leaving him to watch helplessly from the sidelines.  It didn’t feel right. His whole life he’d tried to fight against the wrongs of the world. It was so frustrating to witness the death rattle of humanity and not be able to do anything.  He even knew how it would end. He knew the ins and outs of the monster that was orchestrating it.

“He believes in paradise.”  Sam didn’t need to specify that he was talking about Lucifer.  They both knew the loathsome archangel would forever be the unnamed creature hiding between the lines throughout the narrative of their lives.  “But the angels don’t know what paradise is. Michael and Heaven talked about some perfect existence where souls would live in eternal peace…. Lucifer doesn’t believe in that.  I’ve seen his paradise and there aren’t any humans: souls or otherwise. It’s an endless garden of God’s creation—but God is dead. Lucifer would craft the new garden himself. He’d step into the shoes of God.  That’s his paradise.”

“He won’t get it.”

He couldn’t tell if Ruby was speaking with faith or merely from a place of spite.  Either way, he believed that she’d do everything in her power to stop Lucifer from getting what he wanted.  She was vindictive as hell, no need to look any further than how she’d escaped. 

Sam cradled Emma in his arms.  She was so small and vulnerable.  And it was his job to try to protect her from a conflict between two armies bent on recreating the world.  For the last month and a half they’d been focusing on Lucifer, but there was an entire other force to be reckoned with.  He hadn’t really considered Michael and the Heavenly Host very much since having Lucifer leave him.

He glanced at her.  “Do you think Michael is powerful enough to stop him?”

“No,” Ruby answered.  “Michael may have beaten him last time, but that’s his handicap.  He doesn’t know Lucifer like we do. He’s different now.” She idly picked up a pebble and threw it.  “Anyway, Michael isn’t on our side. There’s no way something like him is going to let us be. Lucifer’s ex-meatsuit, an ex-lieutenant, and his nephilim—  People like us can’t count on the good guys.”

“I could’ve sworn I used to be one of the good guys.”

“Good man:  yes. One of the  _ good guys _ ….”  She shrugged at her own semantics, then settled on, “In my experience, the good guys usually end up doing a lot of bad.”

“We both had good—”  Sam reconsidered his word choice.  “Sincere intentions. We both thought what we were doing was right, and look where that got us.”

Maybe he didn’t agree with what she had done and maybe she had come to regret her choices later, but he didn’t doubt that at the time she had thought she was doing the right thing in helping free Lucifer.  The way she had described her remorse over hurting him…. Against his better judgment, he believed her. 

It would’ve been easier for him to hate her if she had merely wanted to laugh maniacally while watching the world burn, but the situation had been more complicated than that.  She had been trying to escape Hell, but in the course of her mission she had made a friend, and in her ill-equipped, hard-headed way she had pushed ahead with the plan to free Lucifer in order to protect them against Heaven.  To her, the collateral damage was an afterthought, not a boon. 

“We tried, each in our own fucked-up way,” she agreed.  “There isn’t gonna be an easy answer. We’re stuck here, doing our best and occasionally feeling like shit about it.”

* * *

Sam was sitting by their campfire trying to remove the cracked portion of one of his arrows.  He was about halfway through when his mind was cluttered with images of humans being dragged from their homes by demons only to be thrown to Croats for a good laugh.  It wasn’t uncommon for violent flashes and memories to randomly drift into his head. They could be triggered by images or words that were related to what he’d witnessed, but sometimes they seemed to come out of nowhere.  He supposed that wasn’t unexpected. His brain was gradually processing a huge amount of traumatic information. Some things would inevitably lack context until it linked up to the larger web of events. Hell, he didn’t even remember what Lucifer was doing in that memory.

When his mind cleared he looked around their tiny camp in order to help ground himself.  While distracted he’d dropped the arrowhead into the grass and had to find it before he could reattach it to the newly shortened shaft.  Emma was sleeping in her improvised bassinet, having recently been put into a milk-induced coma. The sun was setting, but they’d indulged, allowing their fire to burn a while even after preparing their dinner.  There was a strange sort of peace to the moment, which was desperately needed after such an unpleasant memory.

He glanced over at Ruby.  It was the fifth night in a row that she was using the utility knife to carve a small piece of wood.  Normally he wouldn’t bother asking about her little side project. If it was something potentially useful or important she’d have told him about it.  With no one else around and having to more or less stay together all the time there were plenty of occasions throughout the day when they ignored each other to do their own forms of entertainment.  He had taken to thinking up new constellations at night. But watching her diligently work on something for most of a week piqued his curiosity.

“What’re you doing?”

She looked up at him for a moment before putting down the knife.  Digging through an outer pocket of her backpack, she withdrew six small wooden figures, each approximately the size of a wine cork.  Their features were incredibly rough, but he recognized them as a king, queen, knight, bishop, rook, and pawn. She was carving a chess set.

“An ex-mathlete like you plays, right?” she asked.  “Or am I gonna have to teach you?”

His eyebrows rose helplessly.  “You play chess?” 

The question slipped out.  He hadn’t meant to be insulting.  It was just that she hadn’t really struck him as the type of person to outmaneuver someone several steps ahead.  Her carefree demeanor leant itself more to hasty brawls resulting from poorly chosen words. He mentally kicked himself at the thought that maybe that’s why she’d so easily manipulated him before.  Reconsidering it, she might’ve been one of the most long-term connivers he’d ever known.

“I was born a bit before Nintendo,” she replied.

He nodded, acknowledging that it made sense that she might be more familiar with lower-tech forms of entertainment.

“Can I help?”

Ten days later they had a full chess set.  In order to distinguish the pieces, Ruby stained half the pieces with blood.  It wasn’t the most wholesome technique, but every time they cleaned an animal they had an abundance of it.  The board was a rubber car floor mat that they had cut into a square shape. Rather than figuring out how to draw alternating squares onto the black rubber, Sam had cut holes in the mat, alluding to a checkerboard pattern with just enough material left to hold it together.  The result was a lightweight board that could be rolled up and carried on his pack.

When it was finally completed they had their first match.  Ruby proved to be just as calculating an opponent as he’d grown to expect.  Their game went so late into the evening that they both eventually repositioned so that they were lying down, reclined by the campfire, playing by its flickering light.  In the end, her queen cut through his knights to corner his king. That felt about right.

* * *

_ Nakir pushed open the carved, wooden double doors and walked into the parlor.  Seven of her siblings and four Knights of Hell were already seated at a long, white marble table.  A dozen archdemons and other high-ranking demons stood at attention along the walls.  _

_ Her twin, Munkar, followed her into the room.  He wore a lean man with warm skin, dark eyes, and long, straight black hair pulled into a ponytail that reached his mid back.  His elegant grey suit was stained with a sprinkling of blood drops along his left side, but he hardly seemed to notice. _

_ With Lucifer formless, Nakir took it upon herself to get the meeting started.  She moved to stand at the head of the table, then in a venomous tone said, “It’s been over a month.  Where are they?” _

_ Everyone knew who she was referring to.  The vessel and the nephilim had been taken roughly six weeks ago.  Since then their leader had been without the ability to act upon the physical world but for a few fleeting moments in inferior vessels.  His will had to be conveyed through whispers to his strongest siblings. Until his true vessel was returned to him, their entire chain of command would be hindered. _

_ “There were delays in trying to restore our command—” one of the demons along the wall began explaining, but he stopped when Nakir held up her hand as if to snap her fingers. _

_ “I was in the blast,” she reminded the room.  “It only took a few days to restore order. I don’t want your dated excuses.  I want to know why we are unsuccessful now.” _

_ “We have search parties looking for them at all times,” Bilet, one of the Knights replied. _

_ “Then why haven’t we found them?”  Nakir snarled, releasing a tiny flame from her curled lip.  “This world is small and physical. The majority of the damned thing is covered in water.” _

_ “Our forces have been engaged repeatedly by Michael’s scouts and the human rebels,” commented Jophiel, the angel representing the regional command for all of Eastern Europe.  “Our forces have been spread thin maintaining our normal activities. Normally we wouldn’t have personnel troubles, but until this disaster our troops were trained and organized purely for conquest.  Slaughtering a city full of civilians or skirmishing with some guerillas is far from scouring the face of the planet for a single man and an infant. We simply don’t have enough people to search everywhere.” _

_ “Can we be better utilizing our intelligence?” _

_ “We lack intelligence—so to speak,” said Morrison from his place along the wall with all the other archdemons.  Hell’s resident arcana expert took a half-step forward, then thought better of getting too close to the angels and backed up.  “Cambion—” _

_ “Our Lord’s child is a nephilim,” Munkar interrupted, relaying the sentiments of every angel in the room. _

_ “Of course,” Morrison hastily agreed.  He paused for a beat, visibly reworking a sentence or two in his head before continuing.  “The child’s mother is a demon and it is possible that she acquired some of the… characteristics that have been found in... other creatures of demonic parentage, namely, an immunity to magical detection.”  He gave a small apologetic shrug at his inability to overcome that hiccup. “As for the mother and the vessel, they appear to have some sort of anti-scrying magic protecting them. It’s likely rudimentary, but those sorts of magics can be very effective in their simplicity.  Matters of life-and-death can sometimes enhance the potency of certain schools of magics, many of which date back to three thousand years and/or are based in blood mag—” _

_ “We can’t find them, but could we find where they initially traveled to?” asked Phanuel, an angel who had been previously working normal field operations but was being reassigned to the hunt as part of the effort to redirect the command’s attention. _

_ “The traitor used some sort of magic to transport them to an unknown location.  We’ve tried recreating it, but she destroyed the laboratory in the process.” Puriel’s tone was understandably bitter.  He’d been head of the five angels acting as clerics for Lucifer and had been in charge of the arcana laboratory at the time of the explosion.  His authority had been undermined, resulting in Morrison and other magically-educated demons being promoted to something painfully close to peers.  The insult was clear, though he was lucky that he was too valuable to let his negligence cost him his life. “There’s no way of knowing where they went initially.” _

_ “How did we not see that coming?” Nakir asked, trying to better assess their prey.  “We had a betrayer, capable of destructive magics in our company, at the heart of our base of operations for nearly two years.  Now our prizes are out there, hidden from us by magics.” She hissed the last word, disgusted by the unseemliness of the ploy. _

_ “By all reasonable accounts the demoness, Ruby, didn’t appear to be a threat.  She was part of the team that had freed our Lord. She even sacrificed herself for his ascension,” explained Abaddon, Knight Commander of Hell.  “We were aware of her background as a witch, since it was part of the reason for her original recruitment. It gave her additional ability to communicate from the field and also made instructing the vessel on his powers easier.  Her magical ability was always viewed as an asset.” _

_ “She was loyal,” added Lilith, who had taken the betrayal of her direct subordinate incredibly personally.  “Something must’ve changed in her after her resurrection—” _

_ “Are you suggesting that our Lord made a mistake?” Munkar asked in a chilling voice. _

_ “Never,” she hastily replied.  “She must’ve had a weakness that had gone unnoticed, then after her death… maybe when she was afflicted with the nephilim.” _

_ “You’re going to blame this on the child?” Phanuel asked in disbelief.  “Nephilim are powerful, but they need time to mature. There is no reason to believe that an unborn nephilim could manipulate its host.” _

_ “Its mother,” corrected Abaddon.  “The child’s soul hasn’t been released.  It’s hidden and still alive, which means that she is taking care of it.  She is tending to the nephilim as her child. There was no need for her to have her mind tampered with to change loyalties.  She knew perfectly well that the child would be taken away, so she did it first.” _

_ The room was silent for several seconds as they all processed the previously overlooked dynamic.  They weren’t just looking for a thief and two assets. They were looking for a parent and child—maybe even two parents.  There was more motivation, more desperation. _

_ “When you say that nephilim need time for their powers to mature,” Morrison said, curiosity getting the better of him.  “How long do we have before the child becomes… problematic outside of our control?” _

_ “It will likely be seven or eight years before her powers can manifest,” replied Phanuel.  “But exposing her to the fluid nature of time in either Hell or Heaven could accelerate her aging, more so in Heaven—” _

_ “If she’s taken to Heaven, how quickly can she be returned to Earth with her powers fully matured?”  Nakir asked. Her expression was grave as she was seeing the unpleasant pieces falling into place. _

_ “From Earth’s perspective, two weeks.” _

_ The mood in the room changed from bad to worse.  If Michael’s forces found the nephilim before them, the Heavenly Host would be able to return two weeks later with a weapon capable of crippling their forces.   _

_ “We can’t let Michael get his hands on the nephilim,” Nakir said, underscoring their main priority.  “She is too valuable to lose to them. We can’t afford any more incompetence—” _

_ “Sister, the theft was committed under your watch,” Uriel noted. _

_ Nakir narrowed her eyes at the comment.  “We were all deceived. My duty was to ensure the nephilim’s birth was successful.  I accomplished that. If there was a failure it was that of the guards. She should have been secured while I was informing our Lord about his child’s birth.” _

_ “You said that the mother would die—“ _

_ “I said that she might,” Nakir hissed.  “Nephilim normally kill the mother. She isn’t as weak as a human, but she’s still just a demon.” _

_ One of the demons lingering on the wall sputtered a bit, offended by the comment.  Nakir telekinetically grabbed him and pulled him across the room in a swift motion that left his throat in her hand.  She slammed him down onto the marble tabletop, cracking his skull. A pool of blood spread out on the white polished stone.  She held him down while looking back up to the others and continuing. _

_ “We need to find them as fast as we can.  How many more of our troops can be redirected tonight? _

_ “Excuse me.  If I might comment,” interjected Crowley from the back wall.  When everyone turned to look at him he continued, “I understand that we need to pursue them with ample resources, but we need to think about appearances.  If Heaven finds out that we’re looking for a nephilim, they’ll be searching for her too. If they learn that Lucifer is no longer able to fight, they’ll make a hard push to wipe us out.  At the moment the fear of our Lord arriving on the battlefield to defend our troops has worked to keep our enemies in the shadows. When they find out his vessel is missing we’ll be up to our asses in angels.”  His eyes flicked across the nine angels in the room. “With all due respect.” _

_ “And what would you suggest?” Abaddon asked.  “That we surrender our single most important weapon in this war?” _

_ “God, no.”  Crowley only hesitated briefly, but didn’t bother apologizing for his blasphemy.  “I’m merely pointing out that if we tip our hand Michael will not only strike us while we’re weak—“ _

_ “We aren’t weak,” hissed Uriel. _

_ “Not only will they strike us while we’re  _ weak _ ,” Crowley restated, unfazed from his pitch.  “Heaven will be on Earth, in force, searching for the vessel and nephilim too.  How are we supposed to find him when our forces are constantly under assault from Heaven?” _

_ “What does some bureaucrat like you know about war?” _

_ “War:  admittedly very little,” Crowley confessed.  “But knowing how to cover my ass with very little….  Welcome to my domain.” _

_ Nakir considered the Crossroads archdemon for several seconds.  He’d been more forward than a demon might normally be allowed, but he’d made an interesting point.  She pointed at him, then said, “You, meet me in my study in ten minutes. Everyone else, I need to speak to my siblings in private.” _

_ The Knights of Hell rose from their seats and exited the room with a polite indifference to the angels in stark contrast to the other demons who offered respectful nods or avoided eye contact.  The bleeding demon was released and allowed to scurry away while muttering apologies for his tone. For his part, Crowley looked Nakir in the eyes, giving her his full attention as he left to go wait for their more private meeting.  When the room had been cleared of non-angels, Munkar waved his hand closing and locking the door before sitting down in an empty chair to give his twin the floor. _

_ “We have yet another problem,” she began in an equally firm tone but at a much lower volume.  “Several of our siblings have reported that their powers are beginning to wane.” _

_ Puriel sat up slightly in his chair.  “Our powers have been stable since the fall.  If Heaven is doing something to sever us from the Garden….”  His mouth opened and closed a time or two trying to find some reasonable end to such a terrifying thought. _

_ “We don’t know the cause, but until we do I want all angel clerics assigned to this matter.  Let Morrison and his demons work to clean up the mess their damned kin made,” Nakir ordered, then continued in a very serious tone.  “The demons don’t find out about the waning. We’re still far more powerful than them, but our numbers are far fewer. The Crossroads fiend was right, we can’t show our weakness.  To whatever extent possible, until we resolve this, segregate our ranks so that the demons don’t notice any changes. They fear us. Use that fear.” _

_ “Ma’am, how do we proceed with the hunt for the vessel?” asked Phanuel.   _

_ “If we’re trying to reduce interaction with demons, it might be best to assign our species to different tasks,” suggested Uriel.  “Let the demon hordes continue maintaining our presence on the battlefield and rooting out human settlements, meanwhile we can pull back our siblings for the hunt—at least until our clerics resolve the ailment.” _

_ “You’re suggesting that we significantly reduce the number of bodies looking for the vessel and the nephilim,” Puriel pointed out. _

_ “Sending bodies to aimlessly wander is a drain on our resources and signals to our enemies that something is wrong.  We need to be searching for them in a more intelligent manner.” _

_ Nakir put two fingers to her lips and closed her eyes, silencing the room.  Their breath turned to mist as a thin frost formed, covering every surface in the parlor.  Her head tilted to the side at a whisper only she could hear. When she opened her mouth to finally speak, the flame on her tongue burned blue for a moment before the temperature in the room returned to normal. _

_ “The waning must be kept a tightly held secret.  Segregate the units. Assign demons to command their own people and put them to work keeping our presence known,” she informed the others.  “We’ll run special operations to find the vessel and nephilim. No more grand, sweeping gestures of the armies across one plot of land at a time.  Our family is versatile. We can hunt them down; we just need to remember our strengths.” _

_ Munkar nodded to himself, then stood up and announced, “I’ll conduct an investigation myself.  When I find them I’ll return the vessel here and take the nephilim to Hell for safekeeping.” _

_ “And brother, what makes you so confident that you’ll—“  Uriel snapped his fingers. “—find them?” _

_ “I am going to remember my strengths,” he replied earning a wicked grin from his twin.  “I am the Denier, the questioner and keeper of the dead from Heaven.” A few flames escaped Munkar’s mouth as he smiled.  “This world is strewn with corpses. I’m going to go ask the dead where they are.” _


	8. Spring: The Walnut Tree

As the weeks passed, the nightmares lessened, but Sam’s dreams became a troubled blur of more minor horrors.  They were cluttered with traumatic memories, random fragments of information stolen from Lucifer, and confusing vignettes.  By the time he would wake up, he could hardly make sense of anything that he’d seen, though in a way he felt like things were improving.  Early on he’d only have the vaguest impressions: a group of humans being beheaded, or an explosion destroying some building. More recently he was waking up with more details:  Lucifer’s demon armies flowing like an ash cloud over a city; Nakir chewing out some subordinates over something in the marble parlor; a coven being slaughtered by a pair of angels; the archdemon Crowley standing in Lucifer’s parlor for some reason… which was odd.  He didn’t remember Lucifer ever inviting a demon into his study, even an archdemon. The flashes were confusing, but at least as they grew clearer he might be able to start figuring out how they fit into the timeline. 

They had reached an expanse of what had once been farmland.  Unfortunately, some time ago the farmers had abandoned their crops, leaving the plants to wither and die in the sun.  Without the flora, the topsoil had become loose and dusty. Sam had been quick to observe that that was the sort of thing that had led to the Dust Bowl in the mid-to-late 1930s.  He shouldn’t have been surprised when Ruby explained that she was familiar with that ecological crisis, having actually been on Earth at the time.

Luckily they weren’t without access to sources of water.  There were several man-made reservoirs branching off from a handful of rivers and creeks.  They just lacked the more minute irrigation to keep the large stretches of plains green.

Hunting was a bit harder than usual.  Sam had bagged a coyote, which they normally wouldn’t be able to fully utilize before it started to turn.  Instead, having realized that food might become scarce, they decided to cook the excess meat until it was essentially dry, little chunks that would hopefully take longer to spoil than more tender or palatable meat.  They didn’t push their luck with the tough meat pellets, but they were good in a pinch.

Sam was trudging across the dusty field, gnawing on one of the coyote nuggets when he spotted something bright on the horizon.  For a moment he thought that his eyes might’ve been playing tricks on him, that the monotony of the scenery had finally tricked his fatigued mind.  But after taking a few seconds to close his eyes, resting them and giving him fresh sight, he saw that the shiny point was still in the distance ahead of them.

“Wait,” he told Ruby, who was walking several feet away.

She stopped walking and checked to see if he was bothering to ready his bow, but he wasn’t.

He pointed toward the light.  “See that?”

She squinted, then raised her hand so that a shadow covered her eyes.  After taking a little while to study the horizon she walked a few yards away from him while continuing to keep her eyes fixed on that point.  “Is that a reflection?”

Sam tried straining to see if he could make it out, but whatever it was was too small and blurry.  “I think you might have better eyesight than me.”

“Don’t worry.  I’m sure you can get some prescription glasses made.”

He laughed sarcastically.  As grateful as he was to be free of Lucifer, going from superhuman senses to imperfect ones was occasionally disturbing.  He hadn’t considered his vision as being bad before then— Hell, it still wasn’t actually bad. He could hunt and see the definition of the leaves in the trees.  It just wasn’t perfect. If he had his way it’d never be perfect again.

They cautiously approached the mysterious piece of metal.  To their shared surprise it wasn’t a building or anything so large.  As they walked it became clear that it was a sheet metal sign roughly the size of a pool table that seemed to hang in the air.  Once he realized what it was Sam’s stomach knotted. The damn thing was attached to a chain-link fence. 

Upon closer inspection and knowing what to look for, there was a thin band of spiraling grey that paralleled the ground above it.  The barbed wire hadn’t been nearly as visible set against the partially-overcast sky. When they got close enough for the sign to be legible they both stood and silently read it.

“Danger:  Explosives,” it warned in bold letters.  “Virus null zone. Live land mines. No persons beyond this point.”

Ruby approached the fence, gripped the chain-link, and rested her forehead against it.  He appreciated her visible disappointment. Despite not having a specific destination, they had generally been intending on traveling in that direction.  To suddenly have their rhythm halted was disorienting.

“Do you think we’re on the side they were trying to defend or banish?”  She sounded too jaded for the question to be particularly concerned. It came off as nearly academic indifference.

“I don’t know,” he replied.  “We think—thought—” Sam pursed his lips, then started over.  “He thought there wasn’t anywhere that was safe from the virus.”

“So if we could magically cross the barb wire and bombs, it’s not like we’d catch a break?”

“There might be some human settlements that are safe against Croats—”

“But that’s out of the question,” Ruby said, finishing the sentiment while looking at their daughter’s black and golden eyes.  She turned around and leaned back against the fence before sinking down to the ground.

He took off his backpack to join her, sitting on the dirt.  The chain-link gave subtly behind him, but there wasn’t any chance of knocking it down—not that he’d want to if there was a fucking minefield on the other side.  They’d hit a literal wall. Looking back at the bare field from which they’d come he felt suddenly exhausted. There wasn’t much in the way of hunting where they’d just passed through.  In theory, they might be able to backtrack a bit, but they’d be risking over-scavenging the area. 

Not to mention the fact that neither of them wanted to stay in the same location for very long for no good reason.  There were angels and demons prowling for them. Staying in one small area for more than a single night meant leaving more evidence of their presence, which might easily attract unwanted attention.  The thought of lingering anywhere for too long felt like a trap. They were on the run; if nothing else the instinctive need to move made turning around profoundly unpleasant.

Ruby nodded to the pocket of his backpack that contained their current maps, then took out her canteen.  She took a long swig before checking Emma’s skin to make sure the seven-week-old was still warm enough. Once Sam saw that their daughter was comfortable he pulled out the map and laid it out on the ground between him and Ruby.  They both stared at the map briefly before looking down the length of the fence from right to left. His eyes met hers when they were done assessing their immediate, unspectacular surroundings. 

He said what he suspected they both were thinking.  “There’s no way of knowing how far this fence goes.”

Ruby gestured at the map, indicating the north-south orientation of what they could see of the fence.  “We know it’s going sort of like this. There’s marshland to the south, which means probably no land mines, but maybe fence and we sure as hell don’t want to wade through that.”

He couldn’t imagine trying to navigate that sort of mire without a raft, never mind the fact that they were transporting an infant.  It sounded like a recipe for a grizzly death, be it drowning, getting attacked by some sort of animal, or succumbing to a debilitating illness.  If at all possible he wanted to stay out of such dangerous territory. 

She pointed at a collection of towns and small cities north of them.  “Do you remember any of these towns? Did he take you there?”

Sam examined the map and tried to recall any memories that might be associated with the region.  At first nothing came, but after a few seconds a handful of images began trickling in. The influx was nearly dizzying, making it hard to parse the mess.  Once he’d started dividing the memories up by location it still took some time to try to figure out which vignettes had happened where. Thankfully Ruby patiently waited for him to sort through everything.

“I think we went to these four here.”  He pointed to a few small cities in southern Indiana.  “I don’t remember there being a fence near there, but I’m not sure.  It’s kind of spotty.” 

He furrowed his brow at the gamble they would take to travel that far north in the hopes of getting around the fence.  As he worried he could feel some small piece of knowledge click over. His intuition whispered that those towns were clear of the fencing, that they could get to them and from there go above the null zone.

“There’s something in my head telling me that we can make it,” he muttered.  “I don’t know how I know, but I just….”

“Your brain is full of stuff that you don’t know that you know.”  She paused a beat to double check her statement before continuing.  “You could be putting pieces together without you even realizing it.”

“But how am I supposed to know what’s real—what’s based on solid intel versus some random guess?”  He sighed, then leaned his head back against the fence. “I don’t know if we can trust me with stuff like this.”

She nodded to herself as she processed his concern.  “If I don’t have anything more than guessing to contribute, then whatever you have to say is better than nothing.  We’ll take it all with a grain of salt.”

His fingertips traced the map.  “What do you think?”

“I think we go with your gut.  You’re a sharp guy. If anyone can distill five thousand years of experience that’s been run through a confetti machine into something useful it’s you.”  She folded up the map, handed it back to him, then stood up and stretched. “Anyway, if it’s the wrong choice I want someone else to blame.”

She turned around with a mischievous speed, eager to get the last word in the conversation.  His eyes narrowed slightly at the small jab, but it had been the lighthearted sort that left him smiling.  He got up, grabbed his bag and followed her north.

* * *

Ruby was nursing Emma while Sam cooked some squirrel and walnuts in a pot over the fire.  Venturing further north had taken them clear of the wasted farmland and into a slightly greener area.  The presence of trees and shrubbery brought with it more prey to hunt as well as some new perks like walnuts and a few spring-growing vegetables.  When the mixture had finished stewing he reached up for Ruby’s small bowl without looking, ready to dish some up for her.

“She’s got my hand,” Ruby said, explaining why she hadn’t given him the dish.  She wiggled her hand to demonstrate that Emma was clutching her index and pinkie finger.  “Can you help me with the food?”

Being immobilized by Emma was a problem he was all too familiar with.  He scooped up a spoonful of the meat-nut mixture and held it out for her, carefully positioning his free hand under the spoon to catch any that might fall.  She blew on it, then took a bite. A satisfied smile spread across her face. 

“You’ve outdone yourself,” she hummed.

He tried some, eager to see what made the difference.  There was something about the richness of the crushed walnut that rounded out the flavor in a way they weren’t used to.  As he licked the spoon to get the last morsel on it, he realized that he’d used the same spoon as her. Before he could process how to deal with the faux pas, she interrupted him.

“Hey, quit hogging it.  Sharing is caring,” she told him before leaning forward for another bite.

After only a slight hesitation, he continued to use the same spoon to get her some more.  Rationally it shouldn’t be a big deal. They used to kiss—they used to do  _ a lot  _ more than kiss.  Hell, he used to drink her blood.  Not exchanging bodily fluids was a ship that had sailed long ago.  The more disturbing aspect was that it symbolized a greater intimacy than he had expected to find with Ruby.  Yes, they had a kid together, but they weren’t in a relationship, or even that close. And yet, in a very real way their codependence had bridged some of the distance.  

“So, we’re definitely adding a walnut tree to the farm?” she asked in a voice untroubled by the same musings as him.

The farm was their pipe dream.  The thought was that someday they’d find a secure farm with a working well and viable soil that was close to decent hunting grounds.  It was the thing they aspired to, the hopeful thought that kept them moving. Without it he shuddered to think how quickly the bleakness of their situation might crush them.

“Definitely,” he replied.  “Some corn, lettuce, zucchini—“

“All your vegetables,” she assured him.  “And at least ten chickens.”

He let out a dry laugh.  “Good luck catching ten chickens,” he muttered before taking another bite.

“For chickens, I’m highly motivated.  Give me a couple weeks—a little corn for bait, some nets, maybe a trench filled with punji sticks.”

“Punji sticks?”  His lips curled into a smile.  “I thought the goal with chickens was generally to take them alive?”

“I have a broad definition of success.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

“I assume if anyone has ever had to tell you something twice it was because you were temporarily deafened the first time.”

He took the compliment, but countered, “I’m pretty sure if you ever had to tell someone the same thing twice, the second time you just tattooed it onto their flesh.”

She nodded in acknowledgment of his comment.  “I’m not really the sort to suffer fools.”

“Rather, you’re the sort to make fools suffer.”

A mischievous grin spread across her lips at the turn of phrase.  He couldn’t help but take a little pleasure in the fact that he’d made her smile and that she didn’t have a cute retort.  He’d won that round.

She opened her mouth at him, wordlessly asking for another bite.  He carefully offered her another spoonful, but just as she was taking the bite Emma flounced, tugging on Ruby’s hand.  The sudden huff and motion made both of them look down to check on the baby. A little bit of the precious squirrel-walnut mixture fell from the spoon, landing on Ruby’s top just above her left breast.  

They both stared at the lost morsels for a second, then she tried to lean her head down to reach it with her tongue despite the futility of such a maneuver.  Seeing her vulnerable state, Sam reached out, plucked the few pieces from her chest, and popped them in his mouth.

She gawked at him for a moment before saying, “You really are a monster.”

He shrugged innocently, then gave her a large scoop as an apology.  “You know, with all that big talk of punji sticks, maybe you should take over hunting for a little while.”

“If you see a good target and the opportunity for me to take a day or two going ‘Home Alone’ with the traps, then I’m game.”

“Next sheep or lamb we see,” Sam mused.

Occasionally they saw the rare remnants of cattle herds wandering about.  Much more frequently they’d come across the skeletons of livestock that had been abandoned, likely during the chaos of the Croatoan virus, and left to starve or die of thirst in their enclosures, or be eaten by ravenous Croats.  But the few strays that had been freed or managed to escape sometimes grazed on the green hillsides, very wisely keeping their distance from Sam and his bow.

“You craving a rack of lamb or some chops?” she asked, consciously or not licking her lips.

His stomach growled, but his mind was much more intrigued by the animals’ other uses.  “We could use the wool or even the hide if we had enough time to tan it. Eventually we’re gonna need more cold weather gear.”

“When it starts getting closer to fall we can start looking for gear.”  They didn’t have the luxury of being able to carry a lot of unnecessary supplies around with them in advance.  Every ounce added up when they were hiking for at least six hours a day.

“Down jacket, animal hide—when it starts getting colder I’ll take whatever we can get.”

She rocked their daughter, who had started gumming Ruby’s middle finger.  “Yeah. I hear that.”

After they had eaten, Sam took his turn playing with Emma while Ruby cleaned up their cooking equipment.  He’d found a lush, dry patch of grass and laid her down so that she could touch the soft grass. Her little hands gripped the strange texture and she made a few quiet cooing noises.  He held his hand above her and wiggled his fingers. It took her a few seconds of studying where his hand was before she waved her arm up towards it in an attempt at a grab.

“Come on, sweetheart.  You can do it,” he encouraged the seven-week-old.   

Her right arm swung upward and nearly connected with his palm, but flopped down unceremoniously.  He tickled her stomach causing her to huff something that wasn’t quite a laugh and the golden wisps in her big black eyes swirled subtly.

“Good right hook,” Ruby told her daughter while zipping up her pack.  She came over and sat down next to Sam, then continued, “You just need to work on the follow-through.”

“She’s getting better,” he observed without taking his eye off Emma, still surprised at how far she’d come in so little time.

“She’s starting to get the hang of having arms,” Ruby agreed.  “I’m not sure, but I think that’s a little early. Apparently nephilim are usually a bit faster on the uptake than humans.”

“You hear that?” he asked the infant.  “You might be extra smart—not that I’m surprised.”

“Your dad’s a huge fucking nerd,” Ruby told her.

His lips curled into a small smile.  “And your mom is a complete smartass.”


	9. Spring: Penny for Your Thoughts

Sam was sitting in the shallows of a quiet river.  It was a surprisingly warm, muggy mid-morning and he’d stripped down to his boxers.  His other clothes were safely drying on the grassy bank behind him. He was waist-deep in the water, washing the rest of their fabrics.

Ruby was a little ways upstream, watching Emma and filtering water for them.  She had switched into a slightly oversized shirt and just her recently-acquired cotton panties, freeing up her dress and single pair of pants for Sam to wash.  While they worked, they played one of their favorite games:

“Alcohol, french fries—“

“No surprise on either of those,” Sam interjected.

“—Music, comfortable beds, and Leonid Afremov’s figure paintings.”  She finished her amended list, earning a surprised smile. “What’re your top five misses?”

Sam scrubbed one of Emma’s two blankets while considering his answer.  There were many things he missed about his old life, so many that trying to really articulate it would be a fool’s errand.  They both knew that and yet they played the game, focusing more on the superficial losses as some sort of morbid tribute to the existence that they’d lost.  

“Definitely agree with you on the comfortable beds.”  He gave her that one right off the bat. “Hummus, NPR—“

“Not even remotely surprised.”

“Plumbing comes to mind,” Sam commented while holding up the baby blankets he was washing.  For a split second the blanket reminded him of the story about how Dean had carried him bundled in a blanket from the burning house as a baby.  His shoulders sunk slightly, then he added softly, “My family.”

As of when they’d fled Lucifer, Dean had been alive, and rumor was that Castiel was with him acting as second-in-command of their resistance group.  Based on Lucifer’s intel, Bobby had been killed a year earlier and Sam was just grateful that the old hunter’s death hadn’t been at his hands. There hadn’t been any word on Ellen or Jo—he wasn’t even sure where they’d been when the virus had finally been deployed.  Everything had gone wrong so spectacularly toward the end.

“How about top five things about the current setup?” Ruby suggested, trying to pull him out of his negative thoughts.

He appreciated her clear attempt to stop him from brooding and replied with the obvious first answer.  “Emma.”

“Of course,” she agreed.

“Plenty of fresh air.”

“The freshest rabbit I’ve ever had.”

“No traffic.”

“Yeah, during the couple hours tops we get to drive per week,” she muttered.

“And maybe it turns out the company isn’t too bad,” he told her.

She smiled, then replied, “I’ve definitely had worse.”

Ruby finished sealing their canteens then moved them back to the rest of the supplies.  She picked up the baby and carried her over to Sam. He looked up at her—her shirt was partially wet along the bottom and it clung to her body.  The sight of her, scantily clad, carrying their daughter on her hip made him shift and casually cover his crotch with the blanket he was washing.

“Alright, Mr. Clean,” she said.  “You want to take first shot at bathing or are you on Emma duty?”

“I’ll keep watching her.  Go have fun.”

“And no peeking, you fucking perv,” Ruby teased him, knowing perfectly well that he wouldn’t violate her privacy like that.

After making sure that Emma was safely positioned on the riverbank near Sam, she walked upstream again out of view.  He continued to do their laundry while keeping an eye on their daughter. Behind him he could hear her splashing around and singing while she swam.  A small smile spread across his face at the mental image.

When it came right down to it, he had to admit that he was sexually attracted to Ruby.  He’d always been fond of that meatsuit, and periodically it was hard to not think about the fact that they used to have sex.  But there was a dark cloud hanging over that whole dynamic. He had been instrumental in raping her. Maybe at the time he had been as helpless as her, but the act had been perpetrated with his body and, just like all the destruction that had befallen the rest of the world, it was his decision to say yes that had made it possible.  The thought horrified him, making his guilt flare each time he thought about her sexually.

And to confuse things even further, the more they got along the more he noticed himself admiring her.  On more than one occasion in the last few days he’d realized that simply being around her put him more at ease—beyond the normal perks of having backup.  The way she laughed and her subtle quirks, they made the world a bit brighter—

He was starting to have feelings for her.  

It was understandable.  He was starved for companionship.  After two months together it would’ve been excusable for him to develop feelings for nearly anyone that he could stand… though his feelings about Ruby felt familiar and easy.  He’d already fallen for her once before. Things were different this time around, but it was still intimidating as hell to be staring down the same sort of feelings that had been so problematic before.  He wasn’t interested in having that same fucked-up relationship that they had years ago. Sam was barely learning to trust himself again; he didn’t want to mess up their strange equilibrium. Despite their history, they had a good thing going.

“If you want, we can probably camp around here tonight,” he told her, eager to make the leisurely break last as long as they dared.  “I saw what looked like a few rabbits on a hill we passed. When I’m done here, I can go check it out. It’d be nice to just take the day to relax for once.”

“You, me, and the babe relaxing by the riverbank with some roast rabbit—”  She splashed the water playfully behind him. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”

* * *

_A group of six angels appeared in a plaza in the middle of the ruins of a city.  Sam recognized the one leading the group as Uriel, who had been resurrected as part of the group of Lucifer’s loyalists.  The leader strolled around the shell of a downtown district, taking in the destruction with cold indifference. Behind him one of the buildings read “Knox County Archives” and a dirt-coated public bus advertised that the fall 2012 semester was about to start at the University of Tennessee._

_“There’s a magic-user in the area; find them.  See if it’s her,” Uriel instructed. “And remember:  we only need the vessel and the child alive.”_

 

Sam woke up panting, soaked in a cold sweat.  A stabbing sensation spread out behind his eyes and wrapped around his skull.  His hands clutched his head, trying to lessen the pain by applying pressure. He was lying on his sleeping mat in their little camp.  

“Are you okay?” Ruby quietly asked.

“Where are we?”

She pursed her lips at his ambiguous use of ‘we.’  Occasionally she couldn’t tell if he was referring to her, their daughter, and himself, or if he was describing himself as if he was possessed by Lucifer.

“Take a second, then ask it again,” she instructed him.

He rubbed his temples a bit to help settle his mind, then asked, “Do you remember where our camp is located?”  He gingerly rolled over onto his side and began digging through his backpack for the map.

“Best guess is somewhere along the Cumberland River.”  She leaned over the map as he laid it out, then pointed to a twenty-mile stretch of the river for his benefit.  Cautiously, she asked, “Do you remember that?”

Sam pursed his lips.  It was all a bit too confusing.  He remembered them slowing their pace a bit to enjoy the peaceful river and the unusually warm spring weather.  It was just that he also remembered the angels—he didn’t remember the angels; he hadn’t been there. Something wasn’t right with the picture, but somehow he knew about the angels.  He knew that that was real, and now.

His fingers settled on Knoxville, Tennessee, then in a daze he said, “He’s looking for us about a hundred and fifty miles east of here.”

Ruby stared at him in candid shock for several seconds before asking, “You had a vision?”

Sam looked up at her in surprise.  He had grown used to random pieces of knowledge clicking into place in his brain, revealing information to him.  It seemed like he couldn’t go fifteen minutes without some memory or trivial fact sneaking up on him. But this was different than that.  It hadn’t even occurred to him that it had been more than his Lucifer-granted insights mixed with waking from a frightening dream. All of the information that he had gained from his possession had been backwards-looking.  After the connection was broken, new intel had stopped, but what he had just seen was current. He’d seen it somehow.

“I think so.”  He felt like an idiot.  Rubbing his face, he muttered “Jesus Christ, my dreams—I’ve been seeing flashes that don’t fit with when I was him.  They might’ve been visions.”

“I didn’t know that you were still doing that.”  She studied him with a sort of concern that didn’t rise to the level of fear.  To his relief, she didn’t scoot away from him or defensively pick up Emma. “I thought those had stopped when Azazel died.”

She hadn’t ever known him while he’d had that particular power.  Of course she hadn’t. In hindsight he suspected that Lilith wouldn’t have sent a spy to infiltrate his life if he had still been capable of clairvoyance and precognition.  Ruby had only ever nurtured his offensive powers. He didn’t know if that was because she had been under orders to get him combat-ready or if that was because she just hadn’t been exposed to his non-offensive powers.

“They had stopped back then, but….”  

A new memory clicked into place.  His guilt flared and a small chill went through his body.  For a moment he felt an overwhelming sense of dread. The vision had been a gift, but he knew the true value contained in that ability.  He glanced around, half-expecting Lucifer’s minions to appear out of nowhere, surrounding their camp. It wasn’t intuition that made him think that.  It was fear. It was horror.

Ruby saw the change in his expression, then grabbed the angel blade.  “Sam, what’s wrong?”

He felt faint and his body teetered slightly.  Thankfully he managed to collapse away from Emma.  His arms caught him at the last moment preventing his face from colliding with the ground.  He had the vague sense that Ruby was scrambling to help him, but before anything could be done he started heaving onto the dirt.  When he was done he rolled onto his back and stared at the cloudless sky.

“Talk to me,” she said in a voice that did a valiant (if not successful) job at covering her worry.  “What the fuck just happened?”

“Prophecies about the Apocalypse, destiny, divine bloodlines—  I’m not his favorite because of any of that.” Sam’s lips moved for a moment before the words came out.  “He can’t see the future without me.”

Ruby lowered the blade as some of the tension left her body.  “Wait, what?”

“When he was in me he could use my powers, powers he doesn’t have on his own.  We would watch battles before they started. That’s how we took over so quickly.”

She silently stared at him, slowly processing the magnitude of what he’d just said.  She hadn't only removed Lucifer’s physical form when she had taken Sam from him. The archangel had lost his single largest military advantage.  He’d lost the inside of the track.

“I didn’t know,” Sam said weakly.  “When I said yes, I didn’t know that he’d be able to use my powers.  I hadn’t had a vision for years. I thought they were done. We’d designed the trap so that I wouldn’t know what Max and Alicia were gonna do to help weaken us before I did the rest.  I wasn’t supposed to know. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he might be able to start them up—and then for him to use them….” He inhaled sharply as a few tears escaped him. “I swear I didn’t know.”

Ruby put the weapon down, then slowly scooted to be sitting next to him.  She gingerly placed a hand on his arm and squeezed softly. Part of him wanted to pull away from her attempt to reassure him, but at the same time his chest ached with intense longing for any comfort or affection.  He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the supportive touch more than the person giving it to him and what a tender act from her might mean. It calmed him a bit.

“I believe you,” she told him.  “I know you wouldn’t intentionally give him that.”

“He’ll never stop looking for me—he was never gonna stop anyway, but, Jesus, I’d forgotten....”

“We’re gonna keep moving.  I know you just got blindsided in the gut, but you’ve gotta remember that this doesn’t change the game plan.  He was looking for us before. He’s looking for us now.” She smiled weakly at him. “No more reason to be any more scared of him than usual.”

“They’re looking for magic-users, trying to find you that way,” he warned her.  “Can they do that?”

She considered the situation for a moment before replying, “We shouldn’t do anything too big, but minor and personal spells, stuff like the glowing warmth spell, that should be under the radar, especially with our warding.  I think we’re okay.”

He breathed a sigh of relief and reached up to wipe away his tears, gently dislodging Ruby’s hand from his arm.  He’d taken care not to jerk away or shrug her off of him. The last thing that he wanted was to cause a strain between them.  Through some miracle they had managed to find some equilibrium that allowed them to get along. He didn’t want to go back to the tension that had existed in the first month and a half.

While he was trying to calm himself down with some breathing exercises, Ruby checked on the rocks that she had enchanted to produce heat.  Her eyes blinked black as she examined her craftsmanship. There had been a time, even after they’d become close, when he had found her demonic eyes unsettling.  Now they were just part of her. Sam looked over at Emma, who was swaddled in her bassinet beside him, drowsily blinking her own inhuman eyes. He supposed he could thank his daughter for his new open-mindedness on the matter.

Ruby studied her spellwork for several seconds before musing aloud, “Lucifer didn’t see my divine banishment spell ahead of time.”

“We didn’t always look ahead, especially when we were distracted—didn’t consider that something like that was possible.”  Sam looked at her apologetically. “We underestimated you. I mean, I knew you were dangerous,” he said earning a small mischievous smile of pride from her.  “But it hadn’t occurred to me…. He didn’t even bat an eye. So he didn’t bother looking forward then.”

Her eyebrows rose.  “Wait, he could switch it on and off?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re telling me that he used you like a magic eight ball?”  Ruby was visibly stunned. “He could just shake you around and see what he wanted to?”

Sam propped himself up on an elbow as he fought back the urge to be offended by the characterization, but she wasn’t exactly wrong.  “He’s been around forever. He knows how to do tricks like that.”

Her eyebrows remained raised in surprise, but the corners of her lips curled up helplessly at a thought.  “Which means somewhere in your head, you know how to do it too.”

Sam stared at her, struck by the possibility that he might someday have control over his visions.  If he could figure out how to direct his foresight at specific things it would make their lives so much easier.  They could have warning on whether there were Croats in a town before scavenging it. They wouldn’t have to live in constant fear of Lucifer or Michael’s troops ambushing them.  It might even help with hunting or finding a place that could be settled in a long-term way.

“I need to try to figure this out.”

* * *

Now that he knew to take his dreams more seriously he was starting to notice the pieces that didn’t make sense as memories.  Things like the flash of an angel falling from the sky mid-flight or Nakir leading a tactical meeting of Lucifer’s lieutenants suddenly clicked; those moments where Lucifer was nowhere to be found weren’t memories.  He started trying to keep a diary of the important visions, though sometimes it was hard to tell what was noteworthy enough to use up precious resources like a pad of paper and a pen that were weight in his pack.

They traveled as fast as they could away from the angels that Sam had seen in his vision.  No matter how important it was for him to get the hang of using his powers again, their higher priority always had to be keeping distance between themselves and their pursuers.  Once they had a safe number of miles behind them, they returned to their normal pace and could start thinking more about a plan.

As they hiked, Ruby turned to him and said, “I was thinking, I don’t have all the normal bells and whistles, but I could try putting you into a single-depth trance.”

“A trance?”  That sounded awfully dangerous, independent of Lucifer’s people looking for magic.  “What for?”

“It’s a normal part of a lot of spellwork.  Depending on how you do it, it can help repair brain damage—“

“I don’t have brain damage,” Sam corrected defensively.

“I mean, compared to a year ago you kinda do.”

He was a little offended by her observation, but he had to admit that she wasn’t completely wrong.  A year ago he’d been something beyond the constraints of a human mind—well, he supposed he’d always been different, but with an archangel sharing his brain he had been different on an entirely new scale.

“I don’t want you playing with my brain and giving me dissociative identity disorder or something.  Neither of us want me spontaneously turning into _him_.”

“Believe me.  I’m not gonna let that even be a snowball’s-chance possibility,” Ruby told him.  “If we do it, it’d be so mild that it probably won’t even work.”

“Then why try it at all?”

“Because we’ve been walking for two days since your vision and I haven’t heard any other suggestions for how to deal with this.”

He glanced down at her as he gently chewed the inside of his cheek.  She had a point. He had no clue how to go about nurturing his visions.  They had worked on developing his powers before, but those abilities had all been active and offensive in nature.  His visions were passive and arguably harmless—when not placed into the hands of a genocidal archangel.

“How do we do it?”

The trance required very few components, all of which they had… except for copper.  Much to their disappointment, the handful of houses that they checked didn’t have any obvious sources of the metal.  The copper wiring had been stripped by previous looters along with any abandoned jewelry. Searches of nightstands, desks, and mason jars in basements didn’t turn up more than two pennies that were old enough to have a moderate copper content—though it was still about seventeen grams short.  An inspection of the plumbing found that the piping in the area was either PVC or galvanized steel. Sam had the vague sense that he’d seen copper piping at some of the first homes they’d scavenged in, but it hadn’t been a high enough priority for him to have any confidence in the memory. Not that they were particularly inclined to backtrack up to eight weeks in order to get the spell component.

After spending the better part of a day brainstorming and debating what to do, they settled on taking a calculated risk.  There was a tiny island of what had once been civilization—something slightly larger than a truck stop but not rising to the level of being a small town—only a mile east of them.  It was barely a few blocks wide and two blocks deep, making it hopefully unappealing as a Croats' hangout. They decided to cautiously approach it, then check the safest-looking stores for any pennies left in their cash registers.  The theory was that under normal circumstances the registers would contain at least some coins and any previous looters probably wouldn’t have bothered with such a useless denomination.

They waited until after Emma was changed, fed, and sleeping peacefully in her sling before they made their approach.  Sam had tried to convince Ruby to let him go to find the coins on his own, but she had basically refused to let him walk into danger without any backup.  Anyway, they were sneaking around. If they fucked something up and made a noise loud enough to wake the baby, it’d probably also be loud enough to attract nearby Croats—  Or some pathetic rationalization like that. Either way, Ruby followed him toward the very small town.

They had skirted the several-block area from afar trying to do whatever reconnaissance they could before making their approach from a side street.  A brick building with a loading bay in the rear seemed like an obvious target, likely being a grocery or home goods store. Their backpacks had been left by a large tree a couple hundred yards from the buildings, freeing them up to move faster and quieter.  The only things they took with them were weapons; Sam had the angel blade and Ruby took the hunting knife.

Sam strained his ears for any signs of danger.  As they quickly moved down one of the side streets they took care to weave through the broken glass and rubble on the sidewalk and asphalt street—anything that might make a sound.  Ruby gently held Emma’s sling to her in case of sudden movements that might otherwise cause a swinging motion that would risk waking the baby.

When they reached the corner where the smaller road they were on intersected the main street, they paused for a moment.  After several seconds of only silence, Sam peeked around the building. The main street appeared to be empty, though upwards of a dozen broken-down cars were littered about, obscuring his view.  Most of the storefronts had had their windows smashed out, probably during an early looting stage of the Apocalypse. The remaining establishments had gone to the other end of the spectrum, having been barricaded, probably during the later zombie stage of the Apocalypse.  He took a few deep breaths to summon his courage, then leaned out farther to see whether the front of the store they were targeting was broken open or fortified.

Every single window in the grocery’s storefront had been smashed out and the door was ajar, barely hanging on by a single hinge.  With the coast looking clear, he signaled for Ruby to follow him. They approached the entrance but slowed when they saw some broken glass in their way.  Rather than risking cracking it under his weight, Sam gingerly slid his shoe along the ground, pushing the debris aside. They both held their breath at the slight scraping noise that the act produced, but it was a low tone that would hopefully be less enticing than the sharp sound of breaking glass.  Ruby followed in his wake, watching for Croats.

When they got to the door, Sam repositioned the angel blade so that he could use both hands.  He gripped the door, then carefully swung it open. The remaining, rusted hinge groaned a bit, making him freeze, still holding the door.  He looked down at Ruby, wordlessly asking her what she thought he should do. She gestured to the opening, which was hardly even enough room for her to get through.  He didn’t like the idea of her and Emma going inside without him, let alone how problematic it’d be for him to stand out there exposed, holding a fucking door.

He was just about to whisper for Ruby to go on without him when she held up a hand.  For a terrifying moment he thought that she’d heard something, but instead she squeezed around him so that she was standing right next to the hinge.  She took her hunting knife and used the tip of its blade to prod the wood where the hinge was secured to the doorjamb. The wood crumbled a bit. She slid the knife up between the hinge and the wood, then made meaningful eye contact with Sam, raising her eyebrows pointedly.  She was gonna pry the door off the wall. He made sure his grip on the door was good and positioned his foot below it in order to muffle the sound if it fell. When he was ready he nodded to her. Using the fingers on her offhand she gave him a countdown from three. The wood groaned quietly for a second before giving way.  Sam caught the weight of the door before lowering it down to the ground and leaning it against the wall.

Rather than letting Ruby go into the unknown first, he put his hand on her shoulder, then stepped past her to take point once more.  With Emma safely flanked by her parents, they entered the modestly sized grocery store. The broken windows essentially guaranteed that the place had been raided for resources long ago, so they didn’t bother checking the aisles for goods.  Instead they went straight for the checkout area. They wanted to get in and out as fast as possible. Sacked or not, any piece of civilization was a potential target for pursuers, other scavengers, or the infected.

As expected, the cash registers had also been looted, though several of them had been upturned, spilling their coins onto the counter or floor.  They found a couple pennies, but Ruby still crouched down to pick a few more off the floor for good measure. As she was doing that Sam stood a few feet away keeping watch.

About fifty feet away he spotted a group of Croats wandering from a side street onto the main road.  He immediately crouched down to join her out of the line of sight of the Croats, below the broken storefront windows, then placed his fingers to Ruby’s lips.  She took the hint and mouthed, “What is it?” Sam made his hand into the shape of a C. She started ticking off a count on her fingers asking him how many. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he held up seven fingers, nearly dropping his angel blade while trying to hold it in only three fingers.  Ruby widened her eyes at him in exasperation at the close call, earning a quick shrug-like gesture. Regardless it was too many for him to count at a glance, which meant it was definitely too many for them to fight. She silently cursed, then hastily picked up the last few pennies from the ground in preparation for them making a quick retreat.  

The shuffling sound of the Croats’ steps became louder as they moved closer.  Sam and Ruby, still crouched, hurried around the checkout counter. He spared a moment to glance around the counter, checking to see if there was a way out that wasn’t exposed.  The front exit was no good for obvious reasons, but if they could go down one of the aisles towards the rear of the building they might be able to slip out the back door by the loading bay.

He gestured to the third aisle, then raised three fingers to make sure Ruby knew where they were headed.  Tapping her shoulder, he gave her a gentle push, encouraging her to go. Still crouching low, she hurried to the third aisle, using the checkout counters for cover as much as possible.  Sam waited a moment, listening to see if there were any Croats charging in the door that he needed to intercept. When he was fairly sure it was safe he quickly followed her.

They were almost to the back storeroom when they heard the crunch of glass at the front door.  Rather than risk opening the door to the back room, Sam grabbed Ruby and pulled her into a dark alcove between the industrial refrigerator and the wall.  There was hardly enough room for them in that cramped space. Spiderwebs fell onto them and clung to their faces, but they didn’t attempt to wipe them off.  Sam tried to suck in his chest so that Emma wouldn’t be pressed uncomfortably between them, but the awkward position still woke her up and made her start fidgeting.  Ruby made a soft soothing sound and tried to get her to breastfeed so that she wouldn’t cry. Sam held up the angel blade, ready to fight if necessary, but thankfully Emma latched on and started nursing.  He carefully reached up and began gently patting her head with his offhand as he watched for signs of the Croats getting closer. After a few minutes the lumbering footsteps receded back over the broken glass, down the street.

Sam gave the Croats a decent head start before he even lowered his weapon.  He leaned his head back against the wall and whispered, “We need to find her a pacifier.”

Ruby tilted her head, acknowledging the point.  “How many Croats do you think are there?”

“At least seven.”

“Back door and run like hell?”  A spider web hanging on her face fluttered as she spoke.

“Quietly run like hell,” he clarified.

“You know it.”

It took them another ten minutes to sneak through all the doors and debris in the back half of the store.  The back door was not only locked, it had a security bar across it. Sam gingerly dislodged the heavy metal beam, then undid the three deadbolts.  After another silent three count he opened the door and they made their break for it. The loading bay was clear of Croats and the setting sun helped cast shadows on the terrain around them, making it easier for them to slip away.  They didn’t even stop when they got to their packs, they just grabbed them and kept jogging away as fast as they could without upsetting Emma.

An hour later they finally stopped to rest.  That night they didn’t have a fire for fear that the light would attract Croats.  They both shared their blankets for warmth with Emma sleeping on Ruby’s chest. When Sam woke up in the morning his legs were intertwined with Ruby’s.  He was holding her around her waist, and his face was nestled in her hair.

His brain sputtered for a moment, then he hastily let go of her and scooted backwards while saying, “Sorry.  I didn’t mean—”

She saved him from having to finish the sentence.  “You were cold.”

Sam quickly turned away from her in order to keep her from seeing the embarrassment on his face.  He started immediately packing up their camp, eager for the distraction. “We should get moving, put some more distance between us and those Croats.”


	10. Late Spring: Intimacy

“Alright.  I need you to try to relax,” Ruby told him as she wrapped the pennies in a piece of cloth.

Over the course of a day they had managed to put approximately twenty miles between themselves and the group of Croats they had seen in town.  They decided that rather than pushing hard for the second day in a row they would instead keep camp at the same location and use the day in the middle to attempt the trance.  She instructed Sam to get comfortable, so he leaned back against the base of a large tree. Ruby knelt down in front of him and started fine-tuning the positioning of his limbs.

She gently took his hands, rested them palms-up on his thighs, then massaged the inside of his wrist with her thumbs.  He fought the urge to pull away from the surprisingly intimate contact. Despite the fact that it was platonic, he still felt embarrassed.  On many occasions they had huddled together to stay warm at night, but that was a very different interaction. Staying warm was a matter of life and death.  And maybe he had picked a little food off her shirt a bit back, but wasting food was a cardinal sin in their lives. Whatever incidental contact they’d made hadn’t been so… indulgent or tender.  But having her gently rubbing him—it made his stomach knot. Well, ‘knot’ wasn’t quite the right verb, and his stomach might’ve been a bit high.

“Come on.  I can’t do this if you’re on edge.”  He opened his eyes to her staring at him with a mildly annoyed expression.  “Are we doing this?”

“We are,” he assured her.  “I just….”

“It’s complicated,” she suggested knowingly, then leaned back, sitting down in front of him so that there wasn’t any immediate threat of her grabbing him again.  “Sam, if we’re gonna do this I’m gonna have to touch you, but it’s only to help you enter the calm. I won’t cop a feel and If you want to stop at any time you’ll be able to let me know.  I promise I’ll stop. We won’t do anything unless you feel safe and in control.”

There was a sincerity in her voice and the softness to her features.  He supposed that, having been assaulted by Lucifer, she could truly appreciate what it meant to be victimized, taken beyond the point of consent.  While he was possessed he’d been violated in nearly every way imaginable. The thought of losing control, of being exposed, it scared the hell out of him.  The fact that she seemed to not only recognize his fear, but also see through to the source of it…. He wasn’t sure what to say to such a candid and telling show of concern so he just nodded.

In a voice full of reassuring conviction she told him, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

For all the improvement that their relationship had seen over the last two months, this was on a whole other level.  This was an act of trust apart from all the muddiness of the real world. This was Ruby, asking him to trust her with his mind and his trauma.  More than any night when she’d keep watch while he slept, this was the moment for her to prove herself to him. He held his arms back out to her.  When she took them their eyes met for a second, but neither of them was prepared to comment on the looming moment of vulnerability. He closed his eyes, then leaned back against the tree.

“You’re fine,” she told him in a soft voice.  Her thumbs gently rubbed the inside of his wrist.  “I want you to think of something peaceful: lying on the bank of a river with Emma sleeping on your chest.” 

As he imagined the peaceful scene, he felt a warm tingling spread up his arms.  When it reached his chest the mild heat traveled up his throat in a way that reminded him of having a glass of scotch.  As soon as it reached the back of his skull the sound of the wind in the nearby trees turned quiet.

“Sam, can you hear me?”

His lips tingled as he whispered, “Yes.”

“Good.  You’re doing great,” she said encouragingly.  “I want you to think about your visions. Don’t worry about Lucifer.  He can’t hurt you. Okay?”

His mind briefly drifted towards the memories of Lucifer, but when she told him the archangel couldn’t hurt him, he was oddly comforted.  “Okay.”

“Let’s start with something easy.  It doesn’t even have to do with Lucifer.”  She tried to keep him from venturing into unpleasant territory.  “I want you to think back to when you first started having visions.”

It felt like he was pushing through a dense fog full of menacing figures and memories.  He could tell that somewhere in the mess was Lucifer and all that had come from his possession.  Maybe the archangel couldn’t hurt him, but there were still secrets and figures hiding in the shadows waiting to leap out at him.  His pulse started rising.

“Sam, are you okay?”

“I’m….”  His mouth wavered slightly, unable to get the word out.

“Are you scared?”

The question was so on point that it somehow shook him despite the mental haze.  In an unexpected way the fact that she’d been the one to suggest it made him feel a little better.  It wasn’t some absurd failing on his part. He could feel a tear roll from the corner of his right eye down his cheek.

“We can stop if you want,” she offered.

“I want to try,” he told her.  “It’s just… a lot.” 

“Can I try one more thing?  If it doesn’t make things better we’ll stop, okay?”  When he nodded she rubbed his wrists some more, then massaged up the soft inner flesh of his forearms.  Everything slowed down and the chirping of the birds fade even more. Once he was magically soothed that much more she tried a different tactic.  “Sam, Emma needs your help. We need you to put aside the last few years and investigate the first couple times you had visions. We need you to do the research to keep us all safe.  It’s as simple as that.”

Helping people, doing research—those were his comfort zone.  For most of his life, when all else had failed those were the two instincts that had guided him through.  More recently his guiding purpose had been taking care of Emma. Helping her, doing the research to protect her, that was exactly what he needed.  He took a deep breath, then pressed forward in his mind, pulling up the memories of his early visions.

“Okay,” he told Ruby in a calm voice.

“Are you ready to do this?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me everything you can about the first vision you had.”

* * *

Sam closed the hood of the pickup truck that they’d been using for the last three days.  They had lucked into finding the still-operational vehicle during what was a slight cold snap in the otherwise gradual warming period that was spring.  They’d enjoyed the perk of a heater as much as they could while it had lasted, but unfortunately their luck had run out on that one. He zipped up his jacket in anticipation of a slightly cool day.

“It’s dead,” he called to Ruby, then glanced up at the sky.  They still had probably another eight hours of daylight, then they’d need to make camp before it got too chilly.

“We might as well cut northwest and avoid the major roads.  There are some small towns out that way.” She folded up their current map and handed it back to him.  “We might be able to find some more supplies on the outskirts.”

They grabbed what they could from the truck.  Ruby carried Emma in the sling across her chest.  She also wore her backpack, a canteen, the hunting knife, and had the rifle slung over her shoulder.  Sam wore his large backpack, three canteens, their rolled-up sleeping mat, the bow, and quiver of fourteen arrows—more than half of which had been found just a week earlier.  On his hip he had holstered the lone angel blade that Ruby had managed to take while fleeing Lucifer. After two and a half months it still was their only weapon against the agents of Lucifer or Michael and they were intensely grateful that it hadn’t yet been needed.

An hour or so before sunset they happened upon a farmhouse that had been almost entirely burnt to the ground.  As they assessed the damage, Ruby found a cellar door below a charred support beam. A few good shoves moved the beam so that they could access the door below.  Sam held the angel blade at the ready while Ruby opened it up.

The cellar was only five feet wide and eight feet deep, but its shelves still had some jars and cans on them.  It was a fucking treasure trove. After picking out all the hazardous, spoiled containers, Sam sorted them based on calories per ounce.  The food that would be hardest to carry and not worth their nutritional weight would be eaten first rather than taking it on the road. 

Dinner consisted of spam, pumpkin purée, and sauerkraut.  On a lot of levels it was a disgusting meal, but, honestly, it’d been so long since they had eaten anything with seasoning that it was a rare treat.  As they ate, the wind picked up and it began lightly raining.

“Risk spending the night in here?” Ruby asked.

“It’s only visible up close and it’ll be dark soon.”

Once their dining supplies were cleaned up Sam laid out the sleeping mat while Ruby cast a spell on a few rocks to make them glow faintly and produce some heat.  Emma was amply swaddled and nestled into Sam’s backpack, which had been converted into her bassinet.

“We might be able to stay here for another night or two,” he suggested.  “Make the most out of the food that we can’t take.”

“It’s cozy.”

With an almost comedic sense of timing, the wind howled outside.  Ruby shrugged at the juxtaposition, though over the last couple months their standards had certainly changed.  The fact that they were in a place with four walls and a single, defensible exit was justification enough to be considered luxurious.  It didn’t matter that the cramped room was stuffy and lacked such amenities as lighting or heat—her spell would work to make up for that a bit.

Sam lay down on the mat and covered himself with his blanket in preparation for sleeping.  In the dim glow of the warming stones, he watched Ruby reposition several times trying to get comfortable for another night of sleepless vigilance.  She tried leaning against the concrete wall but instantly recoiled from what must have been a cold surface. When she tried to rest against the shelves of pantry goods she shifted repeatedly, trying to endure the edge of the racks poking her in the back.  After a while she tried sitting up straight by Sam’s feet, but she teetered every minute or so with fatigue.

Sam rolled onto his side and scooted back a little ways so that there was room on the sleeping mat for her to lie down too.  “Here. Just looking at you is making me sore.”

She crawled over, added her lighter-weight blanket to his, and lay down next to him.  It was a little cramped, but it was workable. Unfortunately, in order to give Ruby her space, Sam had to stay on his side… and he was facing her.  His eyes darted away from hers at the awkward realization, settling on her bare arms. Her skin had goosebumps.

After a few seconds of hesitation, Sam took the blanket and repositioned it to make sure it was fully covering her so that they were sharing it.  He could feel how cold her skin was and started rubbing her. Her eyes briefly closed as her lips pursed at the blissful warmth. She leaned into him ever so slightly.

At the realization that Ruby had been so cold, Sam asked, “Is Emma okay?”

Ruby reached out to check on the sleeping infant.  “She’s a toasty little burrito.”

“Is there a way to make the rocks warmer next time?”

“It’d risk starting a fire or it might be bright enough to see from outside.”  She held her hands out to feel how far the heat was radiating. “It’s helping a little.”

Ruby pulled her arm back in under the blankets.  She started checking to see whether Sam’s limbs were cold and began rubbing him back for their shared warmth.  He noticed their legs intertwine, but didn’t pull back. 

Her cheeks were rosy, so he reached up to warm them.  When he touched her face, it wasn’t cold. She was blushing.  He could feel himself turn a bit pink at the discovery, but rather than pull away, he leaned in and gingerly kissed her.  Her lips parted as her hand pulled him closer. They started kissing passionately, grinding against each other.

He could feel himself getting hard, but he didn’t want to stop.  Ruby began unbuckling his belt as he pulled up her dress. She pushed his pants and boxers down to his knees while he climbed on top of her.  His hard dick was right against her, but before pressing into her he softly asked, “Yes?”

Her gaze drifted from his eyes to his mouth and back again, taking in the nuances of his face.  She nodded at him while whispering, “Yes.”

When he slid into her she bit her lip, silencing a small moan.  He thrust into her slowly and deliberately, trying to be as quiet as possible so that they wouldn’t wake Emma.  His hand cupped her cheek. They were pressed together on the sleeping mat, under the wool blankets. Their faces were only a few inches apart.  With each thrust he watched her nibble her lip or saw her eyes lose focus. 

They’d never had sex like that.  Back when they used to fuck it had always been frenzied; some blur of lust colored by his self-destructive behavior.  But he wasn’t living fast and recklessly. He had something to live for and she was such a large part of it.

Her mouth opened to form a little O-shape as she came.  He kissed her, muffling his own moan as he finished. He rested his forehead against hers and they stared at each other, both breathing heavily for a moment.  Neither of them had really meant for that to happen—for them to cross the line into something more than partners. Yet he’d needed that so much.

He climbed off of her and lay down beside her, then ran his fingers through his hair.  For an awkward moment he thought that maybe they’d just blown up their relationship, but instead she rolled over and snuggled up against his side.  She rested her head on his chest, so he wrapped an arm around her to hold her to him.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.  

The last time she’d had sex it’d been Lucifer raping her with his body.  Regardless of her consenting, when it came right down to it they had been lucky that she hadn’t panicked from remembering the trauma.

“I’m okay,” she assured him.

“I should’ve been more careful—“

She grabbed his face and turned it so that their eyes were locked, only inches apart.  “Sam, are  _ you  _ okay?”

Ruby was asking to see if them having sex had triggered any of his trauma.  She knew what Lucifer had done to both of them. Sam had also been a victim of those assaults.  He’d been raped too. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers, then held her closer.

“I’m okay.  I promise,” he whispered as a tear escaped him.  “It’s just… complicated.”

She softly kissed his cheekbone.  “I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” he sighed.  “I should’ve been more careful, since we look the same.”

“Hey, look at me,” she told him, making him meet her eyes.  “You look less like him every day.”

He exhaled a small, weak laugh at a thought.  “I guess I’m aging again.”

“It’s not that.  It’s the way you look at me and actually see me.”

He ran his fingers through her hair and caressed her cheek.  “I won’t hurt you,” he told her softly. “I promise I won’t ever hurt you again.”

She gently kissed his neck, then whispered, “I know you won’t.”


	11. Early Summer: Turn, Turn, Turn

Sam was crouching in the brush, watching a pair of deer about a hundred feet away.  He didn’t like killing animals, though he’d become accustomed to it since taking up hunting for sustenance.  Watching the deer, he particularly disliked the fact that killing one of them would result in a waste of meat.  With Ruby being a demon they couldn’t really preserve meat for her using the amount of salt necessary to cure it.  The best they could do was make those tough little meat pellets, but they suspected that those only lasted a day or two.  Having a supply of salted meat for him was nice because it reduced the quantity he needed to catch for a little while, but often enough when he’d take down larger game at least half of it would be left behind.  Someday, when Emma was bigger or when they could hold still long enough to make a smoker they might be able to really do a deer justice. For now, it was late spring, the hunting was easy and he’d take advantage of it.

He shot a nearby beaver, scaring the deer off, then came out of hiding.  It had initially surprised him that many of the animals they found weren’t more frightened of humans, but after spending over two months without running into another living soul he’d realized just how rare humans were nowadays.  He expected in a few short years there’d hardly be a rabbit or beaver alive that knew to run from humans—assuming there were any left to run from. When he reached the beaver, he quickly slit its throat with his knife to make sure it suffered as little as possible.  He stared at the blood regretfully, then started carrying it back to their temporary camp.

 

_ The first time he killed an animal following their escape was profoundly upsetting.  The day after they found the bow, he went out hunting and shot a rabbit for their dinner.  When he pulled the arrow out of the small critter, blood coated his palms. The sight of his hands covered in warm blood triggered countless memories of Lucifer tearing his enemies apart.  He couldn't catch his breath. He felt lightheaded. Ten minutes later, Ruby found him lying on the ground, crying. She rested Emma on his chest, then wiped the blood off his hands for him.  While he was recovering, she cleaned and cooked the rabbit out of his view. _

_ “I can try hunting,” Ruby suggested as a means to limit his trauma. _

_ He looked at his barely-touched half of the rabbit carcass in the metal pan.  Despite his gnawing hunger, the sight of it only made him nauseous. “Do you have much experience with a bow and arrow?” _

_ “No, but it doesn’t look that bad.” _

_ Sam wasn't able to keep himself from smiling sadly at the thought.  “I took archery for three years in college because it was an easy A.  My dad taught me how to shoot when I was younger,” he explained. “Dean got more training with a rifle.  I got more training with the bow.” _

_ “Considering how things shook out, I think you got the better deal.” _

_ “If we find a good, soft target, I can give you some lessons, but for right now we can’t risk it.”   _

_ They only had a finite number of arrows.  He had been fetching them each time he shot one, but given enough time and bad conditions, they would inevitably break.  He was hoping they could find some more, or that he could repair any minor damage to slow the loss. If they became desperate he could try making a few, though they’d likely be imperfect and mess up his accuracy. _

_ “Is there something else we could do to get food?” Ruby asked. _

_ “Not as effectively.  I’ll get used to it.” _

_ “We can try to find some farms.  See if their crops are still standing.” _

_ “It’s barely spring.  Nothing’s gonna be ready to harvest.” _

_ “Don’t be such a fucking naysayer.”  She threw one of the tiny bones into the fire.  “You never know what we’ll find.” _

_ “I’m gonna need to get used to blood again—to killing.” _

_ “You’re just hunting like you used to.” _

_ He shook his head at the comparison.  “Nothing’s like it used to be.” _

_ “You weren’t the one who killed those people.” _

 

Sam reflected on how much he’d changed over the last three months as he cleaned and cooked the beaver for them to eat.  Had someone asked him prior to the Apocalypse how to butcher a large rodent he probably would have smiled awkwardly and claimed to be a vegetarian in order to abruptly end the conversation.  Now he didn’t have the ability to indulge in such pickiness. Their meals were literally anything they could cobble together on a mostly-daily basis and his hunting often supplied the bulk of it.  What he caught had varied widely, calling for innovative attempts to butcher numerous animals that he’d never studied in any sort of anatomical fashion before. When in doubt he would take the limbs and back meat, trying to avoid accidentally contaminating the skeletal muscles with bacteria by piercing any of the smooth muscle organs, then cooking it until it was woefully well-done.  The results weren’t always appetizing, but so far they hadn’t resulted in food poisoning.

“You’re getting good at this,” Ruby told him while admiring that he’d taken care to cut tiny fillets.  “By the way, I found something you might like.”

She placed a handful of thyme and spring onions on his lap.  He dug through his bag and excitedly pulled out a small plastic baggie full of salt, indulging in lightly seasoning their meat.  As long as he didn’t liberally apply it, Ruby could eat it without any discomfort.

“When was the last time you ate something sweet?” he asked her.

“Well, it certainly feels like a hundred years.”

“One sec,” he said as he started thinly slicing the white ends of the onions and placing them in their cooking pot.  When they were caramelized he scooped them out and put them in her small bowl. She tasted the onions, let out a groan of pleasure, then climbed onto his lap.  

“I never thought I’d fuck someone over a spoonful of onions, but here we are.”

He kissed her.  “Maybe after we eat.”

As with all the meats that they were unfamiliar with, they cooked the beaver until it was well-done.  The meat was tough and gamey, but most of their meals were that way nowadays in order to avoid parasites.  Occasionally they found some vegetables and leafy greens to add to the mix. Unfortunately, neither of them was an encyclopedia of edible foliage.  To whatever extent Lucifer may have studied botany, that information hadn’t yet finished bridging neurons in his head. The only thing that Sam was able to consistently identify was dandelion greens.

Ruby nibbled his lower lip one last time before she climbed off of him, freeing him to finish cooking their dinner.  He carefully monitored the cooking food, trying to hit that sweet spot of thoroughly done yet not burnt. As he worked, he listened to her tap out a beat on her canteen while singing Queen songs to Emma.  When she finally came around to “Under Pressure” Sam joined in for the duet.

* * *

With the days getting longer they had a little time after dinner to enjoy themselves before darkness surrounded their small camp.  They’d often use the time to make repairs to the clothes and equipment or other chores. After dark they would tell Emma a few stories before putting her down for bed, then there was some time to themselves.  Every few days they would put Sam into a trance to help him practice with his visions. Through his efforts he’d started not only making his new visions clearer and less painful, he’d also started being able to sort through the older visions that he’d initially mistaken for dreams or Lucifer’s memories.  But not all nights were reserved for work, more often—at least nowadays—they would get a bit of extracurricular exercise in.

Ruby was riding him a little harder than usual.  Sam gripped the grass below him and tried to focus on not tearing the soft blades of grass—anything to keep himself from cumming too soon.  Of course, she wasn’t making it easy. Her full breasts looked amazing in the warm light of the fire. He bit his lip when she whipped her hair back.  

“Oh god,” Sam groaned.  “I’m gonna—“

“Hold on, I’m almost—“  She clenched around him as she came.

He’d been close to the breaking point before, but feeling her cum pushed him over the edge.  His fingers gripped her thighs as he pulsed inside of her. She tried to climb off of him, but he reflexively held her tightly until he finished.

They’d been trying to practice pulling out, but it was proving a little more difficult than they’d anticipated.  Both of them had a tendency to get greedy and often enough they’d climax so close together that their willpower kinda fell by the wayside.  On three different occasions, Sam had barely been able to pull out, cumming directly onto her crotch and undoubtedly getting a bit inside. All-in-all, they were only successful about three-quarters of the time.  They weren’t particularly scared about getting pregnant so soon after Emma had been born, but eventually they’d need to get the hang of it if they were gonna stand a chance of practicing safe sex—so they were literally practicing in an attempt to bring up their average.

Ruby rolled off of him, then made a futile attempt to wipe up the cum with a rag.  “If we find a magic lamp full of wishes, you’re getting a vasectomy.”

They had discussed the various possible magical forms of contraceptives, but those certainly felt equally unobtainable.  The spell capable of removing Ruby’s fertility called for the still-gooey spinal cord of a non-human primate and neither of them were optimistic about traveling to a city in order to break into a zoo hoping to find a live monkey.  Removing Sam’s virility would require a more delicate magical touch in order to avoid leaving him completely impotent and sexually frustrated for the rest of his life. The safest spell that they could’ve used on him called for the stamen of an orchid, which inevitably would be in the botanical garden next door to the monkey house.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her.  “Before too long Emma will be able to sit up and we’ll be having a lot less sex.”

Neither of them were sure how they were supposed to have sex once their daughter was more aware of her surroundings.  As it was, they could just lay her down, swaddled in her improvised bassinet and fuck out of her line of sight. But once she figured out how to watch them or pursue them, then they’d be in trouble.

“She’ll have to sleep sometime.”

Sam chuckled and nodded in agreement as he stretched out on the sleeping mat, readying himself to call it a night.  He took Ruby’s hand, leading her to join him. His fingers slid around her soft flesh, earning a hum of approval. He nuzzled her hair, breathing in her scent.  The moment was pure pleasure and as much as he wanted to savor it, blissful relaxation washed over him, making him fall asleep.

 

_ Munkar walked through the jagged, obsidian hallways that were literally endless.  He moved with purpose past several heavy, metal doors. His solitary footsteps echoed down the corridors.  Most people thought that Hell was lively with the screams of its victims, but if they allowed the cries to be heard outside their torture chambers no one would be able to hear themselves think. _

_ He stopped before one of the torture chambers and checked the long, thin, silver pendant that was hanging on the door’s locking mechanism.  The text on the token, detailing the room’s contents, was only written in grease ink. It hadn’t yet been engraved, finalizing the fate of the souls inside.  After checking the notes on the pendant, he unlocked the door, swung it open, and stepped inside. _

_ The cell was pitch black but for the light that shone in through the doorway around the angel.  Inside a few souls recoiled into the shadows, hiding from their would-be torturer. _

_ “I’m looking for a man and woman who were traveling with a baby girl,” Munkar told the souls.  He held out a photograph of Sam. “Have any of you seen them?” _

_ One of the souls crawled from the darkness to get a better look at the picture.  The man that Ruby had killed looked up at the angel and replied, “I have.” _

_ “Where?” _

 

Sam woke up clinging to Ruby.  He hastily sat up enough to check on Emma, then he looked at the darkness around their camp.

“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked, then wishfully added, “Tell me it was a nightmare.”

“They’re looking for us.”

“Sam”—she turned his face to look at her—“are we running?”

The threat wasn’t imminent as far as he could tell, but the whole thing was deeply unsettling.  Despite the theoretical benefits of the intel, catching glimpses of their pursuers hunting them scared the hell out of him.  He shook his head, letting her know that there wasn’t an immediate threat, then buried his face in his hands while taking a ten-count to try calming himself down.  She wrapped her arms around him, trying to comfort him.

After taking a few seconds to gather himself, he explained, “Munkar is on our trail.”

“How much of a headstart do we have?”

“Not enough to last.”

* * *

As the weather became warmer, they had abandoned all of their heavier winter coats.  Sam still had yet to find pants long enough to cover his ankles, but at least his current pair of tan cargo pants had ample pockets.  Ruby had switched back to primarily wearing her lighter weight maternity dress, leaving her jeans and ill-fitting shirt in her pack. The dress had turned brown from mud and random stains, but it was breezy, comfortable, and provided easy access when she needed to feed Emma on the move.

For the most part, they tried to stick to routes that provided them shade to walk in, such as along or through wooded areas, but occasionally necessity called for them to be exposed for a few hours at a time.  Both of them had developed tans and Sam was getting a few of the freckles that Dean had inherited more prominently. More than once they had resorted to applying mud to their exposed skin in order to reduce the chances of sunburns.  It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing.

They were walking parallel to a highway, looking for a creek that the road was supposed to eventually intersect when there was a strange humming in the distance.  Sam looked around trying to figure out which direction it was coming from. He placed his hand on Ruby’s shoulder, stopping her. When she looked back at him he held a finger to his lips.

Her brow furrowed, but she didn’t bother asking him what was wrong.  If he was being that quiet, she knew that he was listening for something or otherwise wanted silence.  She pointed around and casually tossed her hand up, asking what was going on. He shook his head slightly to let her know there wasn’t an obvious threat, then waved his hand, gesturing to the ambient sound.  She nodded before glancing around.

Her eyes narrowed as she squinted at something behind him, then they suddenly widened.  “Cars.”

He didn’t even bother to check over his shoulder.  She briefly grabbed his arm to get him moving, but he was already running alongside her toward a nearby ditch.  They pressed themselves into the shallow recess in the dirt, roughly thirty feet from the road.

“How far?” Sam quietly asked as he listened to the approaching hum of the engine.

“Couldn’t tell.”

He unbuttoned his brown shirt and used one side of it to cover Emma’s blue cloth sling.  The ditch was shallow enough that he couldn’t tell if any part of them would be visible from the road, so he tried to camouflage them as best he could.  Ruby quickly wiggled as close as she could to him in order to be less of a target.

The humming turned to a rumble.  Sam held his breath, lips against Ruby’s forehead, nose buried in her hair.  They could feel the ground shake as a large vehicle passed, then another, and another.  He counted five different cars, probably in some fairly tight formation. 

After the cars were heading away from them, he waited twenty seconds, then carefully lifted his head.  Sam gingerly peeked over the dirt ridge to see the caravan. It was a group of military transport vehicles.

“It’s the army,” he explained, then thought better of the assumption.  “Or something.”

Ruby pushed herself up to check.  “There’s still an army?”

“Some of the humans had militaries still.”

“You think they’re going to or from civilization?”

“No idea.”

They quickly took a detour to get them further away from the potentially frequented avenue of traffic.  That night as they were seated at their camp, Ruby pointed at the horizon. There was a barely perceptible white glow.

“I think we found some humans,” she guessed.

Sam stared at the faint illumination.  He hadn’t seen that sort of nimbus in what felt like forever.  Through his shock he mumbled, “They have electricity.”

The thought of having such an important modern convenience—well, he wasn’t sure that it still counted as modern.  Huge swaths of land were without power throughout the world. When he was Lucifer they’d intentionally destroyed the infrastructure of everywhere they’d visited, power lines included.  Rationally he understood that the archangel’s destruction hadn’t touched everywhere, but seeing somewhere that might very well be one of the last holdouts of human civilization… it was exhilarating.

And yet it was also terrifying.  It was a beacon inevitability doomed to a fiery and bloody death.  Lucifer’s forces may have been distracted looking for the three of them, but the archangel and his lieutenants weren’t foolish enough to ignore the human settlements.  They had to keep up appearances. That included continuing to destroy the humans, especially the ones who still had their culture and old way of life. The few remaining cities that had somehow survived the Croatoan virus would eventually be turned to rubble.  There was no doubt in Sam’s mind… because there had been no doubt in Lucifer’s mind.

Beyond the fear that they might get caught in the crossfire between Lucifer’s forces and the humans, Sam knew that they also couldn’t risk being that close to human civilization in general.  Even as far off as they were, likely ten miles away, there was an increased chance that humans would stumble across their little family. The military transport caravan proved that the humans were at least somewhat active outside of the city.  Hopefully they were doing supply runs that involved sticking to well-established paths, and not random patrols of the surrounding wilderness, but they couldn’t count on that.

He eventually pulled his gaze away from the glowing white light and looked down at his sleeping daughter.  “We need to get away from here.”

* * *

Sam was sitting by a creek trying to shave.  It was about midsummer and the weather was warming up, making his beard less and less bearable with each passing day.  In general, he tried to avoid shaving because doing it justice usually meant using water, which could be scarce enough that he didn’t want to waste it.  He used his hunting knife and very carefully dragged it along his skin while watching his reflection in the metal tin container of their rudimentary first aid kit.  

He had a few small scars where he’d nicked himself on previous attempts at shaving over the last couple weeks, though he was getting better at it.  Ruby had offered to help him, but he’d suggested that she instead give Emma a bath at the same time so that they could keep moving, hopefully finding a good campsite before dusk.  The two of them were only about fifteen feet upstream from him so that he could keep an eye out in case Ruby needed help. 

He stopped shaving for a moment to watch as Ruby took off her clothes so that they wouldn’t get wet.  The sight of her bare body glistening gave him pause. She carefully took a damp cloth and began cleaning their daughter.  He hadn’t expected for such a simple moment to catch his attention but his affection flared.

While he watched her, a vision flashed in his mind.

 

_ Lucifer was trying to inhabit a temporary vessel, but as soon as he was inside the woman the vessel began blistering and tearing apart.  The archangel’s highest clerics evaluated what little was left of the corpse, then started refining their search for a better substitute vessel for their god. _

 

“Shit!” Sam hissed as the vision ended and he realized that he’d cut his chin.

“You okay?” Ruby called to him.  She held Emma to herself, then walked over to see what had happened.

“There was a vision; I slipped.”

Once he put down the knife, she handed off Emma, then began examining the wound.

“I think we should stitch this,” she sighed, then grabbed the first aid kit.  After starting a small fire and heating the needle to sterilize it, she cut a length of the floss, then began threading the needle.  “Do you want something to bite down on?”

“I’ll be okay,” he assured her.

She began carefully suturing the cut.  It was only a couple stitches, but, unlike most other times when he’d been sewn back up, they didn’t have painkillers or alcohol to help dull the experience.  He’d had much worse and really couldn’t complain. Just under six months earlier Ruby had given birth without anything to take the edge off.

She knotted the thread, cut off the excess, then took a small square of gauze from the kit and held it to the wound.  “What was the vision?”

“He’s trying to find a new vessel.  They keep burning out.”

“They sure don’t build them like they used to.”  She smiled halfheartedly at her own joke, then took Emma back so he could finish shaving. “How many humans are even left?  He’s gonna start running out of options.”

“Just before we split, our advisors had estimated just under a hundred million worldwide, not including Croats.”  He picked up the knife, but instead of resuming the chore he absentmindedly played with the knife. When he noticed the anxious tell he put the weapon back down.  He could have half a beard until he was less rattled. “The numbers could’ve changed since then, but I’m not sure how much exactly.”

“You think he might be killing less without you?” she asked optimistically.

“He doesn’t have form—  He’s still dangerous. He can talk to people and manipulate them.  He can still command his soldiers, but he can’t….” Sam looked at his hands.  “He doesn’t have our hands.”

“And we’re gonna keep it that way.”  She took his hands in hers. “He isn’t gonna make you hurt anyone ever again.”

* * *

For several days they were continually watching the cut and stitches to make sure it was healing alright.  Without access to modern medicine they had to be very careful to avoid infections or other injuries that could quickly get out of hand.  Every time one of them had even a small injury they took care to slow their pace and avoid exertion as much as possible in order to help the recovery process.  Thankfully the cut on Sam’s chin seemed to be healing well. He was sitting on a boulder next to their campfire studying its reflection in the metal tin when Ruby walked over to stand directly in front of him.

“I think we have a problem.”  Her expression was pensive and oddly tired.

He instinctively looked around for some sign of Croats or other people, but rationally he knew that she would’ve been more frantic if it was something that urgent.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think….”  She rubbed the bridge of her nose.  “I think I’m pregnant.”

He stared at her, completely dumbfounded for a long while before managing to ask, “What?”

She took his hand and placed it on her lower abdomen.  There was a small bump. He looked up at her, completely stunned by the thought.  They were kind of planning on avoiding just that sort of problem—they just weren’t expecting to have to avoid it so soon.

“I don’t believe this,” he sighed.  “Isn’t breastfeeding supposed to prevent this?”

“Let me just google that really quick,” she said while rolling her eyes slightly.

“We can’t have another kid right now.”

“Trust me, I know.”

“You could just smoke out for a little while,” Sam suggested.

“I can’t smoke out,” Ruby replied.  “Remember the whole no-teleporting thing?  I’m also hexed into this body. His clerics were worried I’d try to abort his kid by dumping the body.”

Sam felt like sinking to the ground, but instead he reached forward and grabbed her hips.  He gently pulled her to him, burying his face in her lap. It was gonna be harder—it was always gonna be hard, emotionally if nothing else, but Lucifer’s precautions had just made ending the pregnancy that much more difficult.  They may have escaped the archangel, but they weren’t free of him.

“Can we find a way to break the hex?” he asked.

“The kind of spell components that’d take aren’t just sitting around in some abandoned house.  We’d need num-num root, which is from Africa. I don’t know where we’re supposed to find a magic shop these days.”  She slowly shook her head at an unappealing thought, then suggested, “I could take something toxic, try to end it that way.”

After a long hesitation, he looked up and told her, “I don’t want to do damage without actually ending it.”

The last thing they needed was to mess up an abortion and deliver a severely injured or ill baby.  Logistical issues aside, that sounded horrific. They were struggling to deal with minor wounds, and that was on an adult who could communicate.  He shuddered at the thought of having a newborn that was harmed beyond their ability to help because they had screwed up.

Ruby rubbed the back of her neck as she replied, “I could take enough poison to kill an adult.”

He started trying to think of what types of natural toxins he knew of, but immediately found a flaw in the plan.  “And what’s that mean for Emma? She’s gonna be nursing for at least a few more months.”

“How soon can we get her onto solid food?” Ruby asked.

“I don’t know.  Almost everything we cook is too tough.  How’re we supposed to get overcooked rabbit into baby food consistency?  Can babies this young even process normal food?”

Neither of them knew enough about the development of infants.  For all of Lucifer’s knowledge, the archangel unsurprisingly hadn’t had much interest in human children.  They could try to start weaning the six-month-old Emma onto the very-solid food early, but switching her over entirely seemed like a gamble if they didn’t know what her tiny digestive system could handle.  But if they waited long enough for her to be a toddler, they’d be risking the pregnancy reaching full term, or at least viability.

“How far along are you?”

“I don’t know.”  Ruby chewed her lip as she thought.  “Emma went a little faster than a human, but I don’t know if that was because she was a nephilim or cambion.”

“How long did it take?”

“About seven months,” she replied.  “My belly started sticking out like this about a third of the way through.”

Sam did some quick math.  They’d only been having sex for a few months and she was hardly showing.  If the pregnancy did last about the same amount of time as with Emma or slightly longer, they were looking at the second kid being born in four or five months.  Based on the long days, it was almost the middle of summer. “It’s gonna be winter when it’s born.”

Both of them had been dreading the prospect of winter before finding out about the pregnancy, but the idea of dealing with either Ruby in her third trimester or a newborn was devastating.  He guided her down so that she was sitting on his lap. His arms held her tight, forehead resting against her shoulder.

“How’re we supposed to do this?” he sighed.

“We were gonna need to go somewhere warmer for the winter anyway.”  Her voice lacked the confidence he’d hoped for. Honestly, he couldn’t blame her.  “We could try to see how far west we can get—“

“It’s gonna be too hard to get past the Rockies.  If we run out of gas up there we’re done.” He remembered the story of the Donner Party from school, the pioneer group that had been caught in the Sierra Nevada during winter and resorted to cannibalism.  Instead, he suggested, “Southwest.”

“We’re gonna head towards the desert.”  She sighed a small laugh at the idea. “Do either of us have any idea how to survive in that kind of climate?”

“The Southeast.”

“It’s gonna be hurricane season for the next few months.  I lived in the Caribbean for a while before they invented early warning systems.  And it still gets down to freezing during winter in a lot of the parts that aren’t swamp.

“We need consistent, functional shelter more than we need a warm climate,” he replied in some desperate attempt at optimism.  “If we have wood, water, and food we can deal with the weather in most places.”

“Ideally not where we get snowed in,” she corrected.  “God knows I’m gonna end up being the one shoveling that shit.”

“Don’t worry.  I’d just salt the path in front of the door.  Nothing could possibly go wrong,” he said with an air of false innocence.

Her lips curled into a smile for the first time since she told him about the pregnancy.  Neither of them wanted to have a second kid while they didn’t even have a plan for getting through the end of the year.  It was a fucked up situation, but at least they were a team. At least he could still make her smile.

He pulled her into a brief, tender kiss, then whispered, “We’ll figure something out.  That’s what we do.”


	12. Midsummer: Night's Dream

They avoided talking about the pregnancy as much as possible.  Both of them were hoping that one of them would have some bright idea or that it would go away on its own.  In the meantime, there wasn’t anything to be done about it and there were plenty of other pressing concerns.  

It was the middle of summer.  When it was too hot or they were low on water they switched over to traveling at night.  They rested in the shade during the daylight hours. In the evenings Sam hunted for their first meal of the day.  Once it was dark they would carefully trek across the fields and forests without immediately becoming parched. 

Demons could see in the dark when their eyes were black, so Ruby took lead.  During their nighttime hikes he carried Emma, freeing Ruby up to keep a weapon at the ready and clear small obstacles like low-hanging branches.  He walked behind her with an arm on her backpack to help guide him.

They did that for several particularly hot days.  On the fourth day practicing the alternate sleep schedule Sam awoke to an unusual sight.  Ruby was perched on a nearby boulder watching the sunset. The sky was painted in brilliant shades of pink and red.  He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen anything like it—probably while he was in college. Yet her face was oddly solemn.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

“It’s a harbinger,” she replied.  “They used to say that the blood of battle could reach up to paint the sky red in warning to tell the damned to turn back from their slaughter.”

“I didn’t take you for a fortune teller.”

She threw him a confused sidelong glance.  “You’re a fucking psychic and ex-hunter. Are you really gonna doubt omens?”  Shaking her head she continued. “But no, this isn’t magic. It isn’t foretelling a fight.  That kind of discoloration means there’s dust particles or something in the air. Pollution causes that kind of stuff.  Something’s wrong out there.”

Sam looked out onto the seemingly endless expanse of abandoned land, then clicked his tongue.  “There’s a lot wrong out there.”

The next day they could smell smoke, but they couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.  There was a strange haziness over the entire area that caught the sunlight, giving everything a peach-colored hue.

“We should head back,” Sam said disappointed by the development.  “Emma’s lungs can’t take this and a rag won’t keep that stuff out.”

He wanted to add that she should be avoiding the polluted air while she was pregnant, but it felt like a moot point.  None of them had a way to protect themselves other than turning around and they were already doing that. But in addition to the comment’s futility, he wasn’t sure how comfortable he was making a suggestion that was based on the assumption that the pregnancy would reach full term.  Rationally they both knew that they’d have to assume the second kid was happening, unless they could find a surefire way to end it. But at the same time, neither of them really wanted to bring up the problematic development.

“Lucifer’s encyclopedia includes how to protect against smoke inhalation?” Ruby guessed.

“I spent three summers living in California.  Wildfires are the seasonal disaster-du-jour out there.”

“Never underestimate the knowledge of a well-traveled man,” she replied with a nod of acknowledgment.

“We need to get away from this thing.  It’s gonna just burn unchecked and these can move fast.”  He adjusted his pack, readying himself for yet another long day.  “If the winds change the fire could turn this way. We need to get away from this quickly, preferably we should get to the other side of a river.”

They retraced their steps, heading into the wind.  After getting further from the haze the breeze began blowing fresh air at them.  Rather than risk getting caught in smoke should the winds literally change they opted to hike into the night.  As the sky darkened Sam could make out the faint orange glow of the fire illuminating its own smoke. It lingered in the distance as a faint threat.  When the night took full effect, they could no longer see the horizon or gauge the distance between them and it.

They traveled as far as they could, heading into the wind, before fatigue made them stop.  Sam set up their camp as best he could in the dark while Ruby fine-tuned the glowing rocks spell to keep their temperature low.  With a wildfire burning not far off it was reasonable to assume that the local foliage would be prone to igniting. Dinner was a few strips of rabbit meat that had been cooked the previous day until they were those tough little pieces, which Sam hoped were close enough to jerky to last a couple days.  With the dangerously dry terrain around them it seemed likely that hunting would be slim. They ate in silence, watching the orange glow in the distance, trying to sense whether it was growing larger or dimming. Eventually they put Emma down to sleep, then Sam lay down to rest while Ruby watched over them.

To his surprise he fell asleep almost immediately.  Some more skeptical part of his mind would’ve expected him to be more anxious about the possibility of a fire encroaching on their camp while he slept, but the fact of the matter was that he’d truly grown to trust Ruby, including to stay vigilant throughout the night.

The next morning it only took two hours of hiking before they saw in the distance ahead of them there was an expanse of black that spread out across the horizon.  The charred land appeared to be on the other side of a highway that had evidently acted as something like a firebreak. The burnt skeletons of a few houses were visible beyond the road.  Sam stared at the large swath of land that was barren and his heart sank. 

It felt like every direction they turned they ended up being trapped.  They could still travel right or left along the unburnt side of the highway, but there was no way of knowing when they would hit another patch of literal scorched earth.  It was the chain link fence all over again. They were captive to the land, including all its resources and borders. Hell, if Lucifer’s forces could figure out where they had started their journey from, then it probably wouldn’t have been that hard to calculate out the limited routes available to them.  If the terrain didn’t kill them, then surely they’d inevitably lose their head start against their pursuers.

Sam let out a long sigh before nodding at the blackened land.  “There isn’t gonna be any food that way and the water is gonna be contaminated,” he speculated, then took a moment to try burying his frustration.  “We just lost how many days….”

“We aren’t going anywhere.  We didn’t lose days. We’re just”—Ruby shrugged—“going a different direction.”

“We keep coming up on these dead ends.  Eventually we’re gonna run out of land.” 

She poked his side.  “Look at me.” When he turned to meet her eyes, she told him, “The way we survive this is we keep putting one foot in front of the other.”  She grabbed his collar, then pulled him down into a kiss. “The trick is to keep breathing. The rest of living tends to follow.”

* * *

It took four days for them to navigate their way out of the dried grassland that had been plagued by wildfires.  Sam had taken some of the ash and started marking their maps to indicate the areas to be avoided at all cost. Thankfully, they had only needed to backtrack one additional time before they found the route that would eventually get them clear.  On their fourth day they found a creek that had acted as a barrier to the fire and provided them with some much-needed water.

They decided to spend two nights there, loading up on water and recovering from the very straining few days.  Sam managed to kill what had probably been a formerly-domesticated goat that was drinking from the same spring, providing them with enough meat for three large meals and a few tougher little strips of meat as emergency rations.  When they were feeling a bit better they began following the creek upstream in pursuits of its source and hopefully lusher land.

A couple days later they were back into more hospitable territory.  Every half mile or so the grassy plains were broken by stretches of greenery and a few trees.  According to their maps they were cutting across a significant stretch of farmland, headed towards what looked like a forest that would hopefully mean a fair amount of shade, giving them a respite from the summer sun.  

As they walked, Sam took a turn carrying Emma in order to help ease a backache that Ruby was developing.  With so little cover surrounding them there was less threat of someone sneaking up on them—or at least something that his bow and arrows would be effective against, so he didn’t mind wearing the baby sling for the majority of the time.

He was watching the horizon ahead of them when Emma reached up, grabbing at his chin and mumbled, “Dada.”

Sam immediately stopped walking and looked down at her in surprise.  Emma rarely babbled. At first he had been concerned that, despite whatever developmental benefits she may have received from being a nephilim and a cambion, she might turn out to be nonverbal.  Granted, he and Ruby regularly went for long stretches without saying a single word to each other, so she probably hadn’t been exposed to as much speech as a normal baby—well, what would’ve passed as normal by pre-Apocalypse standards.  Now he wasn’t sure what metrics of socialization held true.

They had both been watching her closely for any change in the infant’s behavior that brought more sound.  Every time she started crying they waited for the impending hunting party or roaming band of human survivors to strike.  The thought of her making random noises even when she was happy raised the possibility of them always being on edge.

“Did you hear that?” he asked Ruby.

“What?”  She looked around for threats.

“No, Emma,” he explained, pointing to their daughter.

Emma blinked her big black eyes, then glanced between them before saying, “Dada.” 

Sam hugged her, then kissed her little forehead.  He could feel himself tearing up a bit as he whispered, “Yeah, sweetie.  I’m your dada.”

Ruby stared at them.  “I know this is silly, but for a while I forgot that kids actually learn words.”  She smiled at Sam, then joked, “I could’ve sworn her first word was gonna be ‘fuck.’”

He wrapped an arm around her, pulling Ruby into a group hug.  Her little belly bumped into his hip poignantly, so he softly said, “Maybe next time.”

A week later Sam was excitedly trying to teach Emma new words as they trekked across some abandoned farms.  He’d slung the bow over his shoulder and was carrying her in his arms for a bit instead of in the sling. She giggled while playing with his scruffy chin, occasionally babbling in an attempt to mimic him.  As far as he could tell she only knew how to say ‘Dada’ and ‘Mama,’ but with nephilim possibly developing faster than humans he had no idea how many words she might actually understand.

He glanced back at Ruby and noticed that she had stopped walking about twenty steps behind him.  She was standing in the knee-high field of golden grass, staring straight ahead with a look of anguish on her face.  He was about to ask what was wrong, but when her hand touched her small belly he knew.

“It’s kicking harder,” she confirmed.

Sam slowly approached her, reached out, and placed a hand on her belly.  He felt a little shift. It made his heart ache. He’d never experienced feeling a kick before.  Lucifer hadn’t cared enough to bother with such a sentimental act. 

His paternal instincts flared and he held Emma a bit closer.  She wrapped her arms around his neck, nuzzling happily into his shoulder.  His lips rested on the top of her head. 

“I know it doesn’t make sense for us to keep it,” he told Ruby, unsure of what he was trying to say.

“Well, we’re stuck keeping it unless we can figure something else out.”  She somehow looked even more uncomfortable than when the baby was kicking.  “There isn’t a good way for us to end it, short of trying some kinda violent stuff after Emma falls asleep.”

Sam could imagine the horrible scenario:  him having to hit Ruby in the abdomen until she miscarried, or inserting something to terminate it that way. He didn’t think he could bring himself to do that, no matter the problems involved with letting the pregnancy continue.  Aside from his revulsion at the thought of going through with something like that, there was also the risk of accidentally injuring Ruby enough to cause a serious illness or infection that might affect her ability to care for Emma—  Never mind the possibility that Emma could wake up and see her dad assaulting her mom until she was bleeding.

“I won’t.”  He shook his head as he started crying a bit.  He quickly wiped the tears from his face before Emma could figure out that something was wrong.  “‘I’m sorry, but I won’t do that.”

“It’s okay.  I know,” she assured him.  “Is this happening? Like, are we actually doing this?”

“We have a track record of making dumb decisions when it’s important.”  He sighed. “I don’t see why we’d change now.”

* * *

Sam was lying in the shade of a tree on the forest’s edge entertaining Emma while Ruby took her fourth piss of the morning.  It hadn’t occurred to him that pregnancy symptoms like that might be chemical in nature and start affecting her during the first half of the pregnancy as opposed to being the result of some baby literally standing on her bladder.  He made a mental note to be more attuned to how she was feeling.

Emma was sitting on his chest while he tickled her stomach and made silly faces.  She was giggling uncontrollably, but he wasn’t particularly concerned. There were many birds around chirping to provide ample cover for as much noise as they dared to make, and he definitely dared.  Emma’s laughter was likely the greatest sound in the world—certainly the best Sam had ever heard. Surely it had magical qualities because every achy muscle he had faded away.

While he was distracted, Ruby returned and tossed a duffel bag onto the ground in front of him.  Its zipper was undone and the impact caused it to gape open. Dozens of twenty-dollar bills fell out of the tightly packed bag.

“Look what I found stuffed in a tree.”

He picked up Emma, then sat up to get a better look at the haul.  “You’re kidding.”

“Well, now we’re set for life.”  She grinned broadly. “What do you want to buy first, a house or car?”

He’d never seen so much money in his life.  His family had always lived off fraudulent credit cards and occasionally a fistful of dollar bills that had been won at a bar.  Some instincts learned over his youth filled him with awe and reverence for that duffel bag of cash.

Ruby started crumpling a few of the bills in her hand and rubbing them with her fingers to test the texture.  “They’re mostly cotton. If you’ve ever wanted to feel rich, now is the time to wipe your ass with a few hundred dollars.”

Sam sat there for a moment simply marveling at the odd sight.  There had been a time when those little pieces of cotton and linen had been worth so much.  Now they were little more than a novelty. He was racking his brain trying to figure out a use for the boon, but so far the only thing he could think of was turning them into kindling.  The thought of merely burning the money only felt slightly more palatable than using it as toilet paper. He supposed there was enough of it that they could do both.

He picked up a handful of the notes and stared at them.  “The world was ending and someone really thought that these were gonna be worth saving.”

“Call them an optimist,” Ruby replied with a grin.

“It’s strange,” he commented softly.  “I don’t know what seems weirder: that there was a time when these little pieces of paper were worth something or that we’ve reached the point in the fall of civilization where I’m surprised that these had value.”

On some fundamental level those dollars were merely a promise, that when push came to shove their worth was backed by a government—a government that no longer existed.  Without the collective understanding of a community, currency was nothing at all. It, along with many other institutions, was a tulpa. In these dire times the few things that would endure would be subjects of necessity.  After a single generation subjects like economics or calculus weren’t likely to be commonly-known topics. Those sorts of expertise would reside in books scattered across the ruinous world.

The thought reminded him of Lucifer’s fondness for destroying books.  The archangel wanted to erase humanity from the Earth, that included stealing such hard-earned assets as their education.  The circumference of a circle would always be 2πr—it was pure, eternal, and safe, but erasing it from every piece of paper and killing enough humans would eventually erase the knowledge of it.  Lucifer could ruin their culture and leave its origins in nature untouched by simply undoing millennia of learning.

On some level Sam knew that in this new world there were practical considerations involved in prioritizing certain skills and knowledge.  But he wanted to rage against Lucifer’s scheme. He wanted to someday have a library for Emma. He wanted to teach her everything he knew and how to search beyond that, how to research.  That was probably the greatest act of rebellion that they could do, to educate their children.

He looked at the bag full of artifacts from his lost civilization and commented, “There was a time in my life when I was gonna be a lawyer—a tax attorney.”

“Well, these roads really could use a stimulus package,” she replied in an attempt to make him smile.

He glanced up at her, grateful for the attempt.  “Did you ever have boring dreams?”

“Being able to sleep in a bed more than once every few weeks feels like a pretty boring dream.”  She rocked on her heels a bit, then admitted, “I wanted to be a painter.”

“What?”

“I used to paint, when I was human.”  She shrugged almost bashfully. “I never really got famous on account of the whole having-a-vagina thing.  And after I died… well, things like art don’t really hold up when you’re being tortured for centuries on end.”

He was struck by the idea that being on the rack and turning into a demon had taken away some simple pleasure and passion of hers, though it made sense.  How often had he ever heard of a demon indulging in artistic expression that didn’t involve the tasteful positioning of entrails after a massacre? Ruby had been a witch, which may have helped her retain some connection to more than magical forms of craft.  Maybe that had preserved some small sliver of her humanity—if one assumed that artistic inclination was a quality reserved for humans.

“What’d you paint?”

She stared at nothing in particular for several seconds, recalling what he hoped were fond memories.  “People. I did portraits mostly.”

It felt strange to hear about her existence as a human, what had once been her identity.  As far as he knew most demons kept their human personas a highly guarded secret. That kind of honesty was a level of intimacy above and beyond.  He didn’t dismiss how large a gesture it was for her to even mention the fact that she painted, never mind that she continued to humor his questions.  Rather than shying away from it, he decided to probe a little deeper, out of genuine curiosity and also to show that he sincerely cared.

“Why people?”

“They’re all kinda fucked up, but that’s the fun.”  She gestured at the beautiful nature around them. “It’s pretty and all.  It’s just… too serene to be enticing.”

It hadn’t really occurred to him that the quirks and imperfections of people were where most of the interesting bits resided.  That philosophy ran entirely counter to Lucifer’s principles and it made Sam’s heart flare. 

“Do you miss all the people?”

She considered the question for a few seconds before answering with a partial evasion.  “If I only get to hang out with one, at least it’s my favorite one.”

Sam held up Emma.  “Two.”

Ruby prodded her own abdomen with a finger.  “Maybe two and change. When in doubt make more people.”  

He let out a slightly unenthusiastic laugh.  As appealing as it was abstractly, having kids was one of the most damning things they could do.  Of course Ruby knew that perfectly well.

“Maybe someday that won’t be the worst idea in the world.”

“You completely hopeless dreamer.”  She smiled at him, then said, “Have I ever told you that your optimism is one of your sexiest qualities?”

“I don’t believe so.”

Ruby picked up the duffel bag and turned it upside down, dumping the fortune onto the forest floor.  “Come on. I want to fuck on half a million dollars before I die.”

* * *

Sam sat at the top of the electricity pylon, feet dangling a dozen or so yards in the air.  He’d climbed the tall spire of metal beams in order to get a good vantage on the surrounding area.  He looked out over the fields and farmland stretching out to the horizon on all sides.

Climbing the pylons, telephone poles, and large trees used to be Ruby’s job until they’d found out she was pregnant.  Previously, she was the least vulnerable to falls from great heights, but now not only was her belly getting in the way of her ability to climb, they also didn’t want to risk some sort of injury to the baby that might complicate their lives any further.

She’d argued with him about it for some time.  It wasn’t like him falling twenty feet was any better, but he’d become more insistent the further along the pregnancy progressed until, finally, Ruby had relented.

He glanced down to check on her and Emma.  They were seated in the grass about fifteen feet from the base of the pylon.  The seven-month-old was on her hands and knees, cautiously attempting to crawl with moderate success.

Sam carefully climbed down, then joined them.  It was a mild summer day that was too peaceful for him to pass up.  He lay down next to them and watched as Emma clumsily crawled towards him.  She spent most of her time being carried around, so it was important for them to take little breaks like that in order to allow her time to exercise.

“That’s it,” he told her encouragingly.  “You’re doing great, sweetie.”

Emma smiled at his affectionate voice or maybe even the compliment.  He couldn’t tell what she understood, but she was happy. That’s what mattered most.

It was hard to imagine her someday being powerful enough to take on Lucifer or Michael.  As much as he hated to admit it, that possibility was a long shot. She’d need to survive until at least adolescence before being able to defend herself was really on the table.  It all seemed daunting as hell, but they’d gotten more than halfway through the first year. If they could figure out how to survive winter they might stand more than a snowball’s chance.

If they were lucky she might someday have a home.  She might get to be an older sister. He wanted so much for her.  He felt foolish to have aspirations in such an unforgiving world, but hope was all he had left; it might waver occasionally in moments of weakness or despair, yet it was the root of all he had to give to his daughter.  He rolled closer, gave her a little kiss, then rolled back, trying to encourage her to pursue him. She laughed and cautiously gave chase.

The rest of the day was more leisurely than their normal pace.  They were in a fairly bountiful area and needed the emotional break.  It was only mid-afternoon when they set up their camp and hardly an hour later Sam was returning with a large rabbit for them to share.  After dinner, he played with Emma until dusk, then they told her stories until she nodded off. He laid her down in her little bassinet, then watched her from his sleeping mat until he drifted off too.

 

_ Sam saw himself sitting on the opposite side of the campfire.  He could tell from his counterpart’s white suit that it was Lucifer.  It was another one of those damn dreams. Every week or two the archangel would visit him in his dreams to make another attempt at getting him to surrender.  Thankfully, Emma and Ruby never seemed to appear in those dreams, so he didn’t have to worry about any drama related to Lucifer seeing them. For the most part, he had managed to ignore Lucifer, or at least stubbornly refuse to cooperate.  This time seemed different though. The angel’s posture was less menacing; he was actually sitting. _

_ “We need to talk,” Lucifer told him. _

_ He tried to end the dream, but couldn’t disengage, so he coldly replied, “I have nothing to say to you.” _

_ “I know you’re expecting a child,” Lucifer said matter-of-factly.  _

_ Sam felt faint.  For a moment he thought that his heart might’ve stopped.  Somehow the enemy knew about their other kid. That was too intimate a piece of information.  The surprise and fear must’ve been all over his face because the archangel explained, “I can feel the vessel growing.” _

_ He had no idea how to respond to something like that.  His instincts wanted to deny Lucifer everything he could, including the implication that the baby would end up being something that he had a claim to.  But he knew it’d be futile to try and argue that the child wouldn’t be a vessel too. That was just wrong and they both knew it. Unable to formulate a better comeback, he stammered, “It-It’s none of your business.” _

_ “You vessels are very much my business,” Lucifer predictably replied.  “And I am concerned for that business.” The archangel picked up a flaming log from the fire and examined it for a second before tossing it aside indifferently.  “You’re exposed, living like an animal. You and Ruby won’t be able to care for it and my daughter—“ _

_ “You aren’t Emma’s dad,” he restated for the hundredth time. _

_ The archangel’s expression turned from minor annoyance to pure loathing, but he didn’t bother rehashing the old fight.  “The children will suffer and die because you would rather keep them from me than accept my help.” _

_ “You don’t care about them—“ _

_ “You care about them?  That’s how you justify this to yourself?”  Lucifer scoffed. “I’m giving you a chance to end the running.  I’ll even let Ruby live.” _

_ “Bullshit.  She embarrassed you.  You’re gonna make an example out of her.”  He could picture it: Lucifer might technically keep his word, but in the process torture Ruby enough to make death seem preferable.  “How would you do it? Tear her apart and put her back together day after day?” _

_ “She’s too rare a creature to risk that sort of treatment.”  Beyond the hatred in his voice there was a sinister amusement to it that gave Sam chills. _

_ Lucifer was going to use Ruby for the one thing he saw as valuable in her.  He was going to use her to have more nephilim, more weapons. That would certainly kill two birds with one stone:  the archangel would get more pawns in his war, and having her kids taken away would be a perverse sort of punishment for the woman who had stolen Lucifer’s firstborn. _

_ Sam was so mortified and enraged that he could hardly speak.  He wanted to scream and fight Lucifer, but he knew that in the dreamscape it would mean nothing.  Instead, he took a breath, tried to control his trembling, and said the one thing that he knew was remotely effective against his nemesis. _

_ “No.” _

_ “You could see the children from time to time,” Lucifer continued, unfazed from his pitch.  “I would even let you manifest so that you could interact occasionally. I’d allow that if you would return voluntarily.” _

_ Lucifer was bargaining with Sam’s children, present and possibly any others that the archangel might make with his body.  He was trying to use Sam’s love for his kids against him and all it would cost was betraying them and Ruby along with the entire world. _

_ Some terrified voice in the back of his mind whispered that if things really did go wrong, if capture was inevitable, maybe that arrangement would be the best offer he could hope for.  At least he’d be able to spend some time with his children as opposed to being trapped inside again—they’d at least have one of their parents part of the time. But that meant he’d have to turn himself in and the suffering would be an inevitability.  He wouldn’t do that to his kids or Ruby; he wouldn’t do that as long as there was a chance. _

_ Sam shook his head.  “You won’t use Ruby. You won’t use me.  And I swear you will never use our kids.” _

_ Lucifer studied him thoughtfully for a long while, then replied, “We’ll see.” _


	13. Late Summer: Desperation

Neither of them was sure how to deal with the fact that Lucifer’s side knew they were expecting another child.  They both felt violated again. Having their former captor and abuser observing aspects of their most intimate relationship.  It was beyond an invasion of their privacy; Lucifer was claiming to have some right to their second child. It wasn’t even viable and the archangel was already trying to use it, even if only as leverage.

More than being a violation, the discovery changed the stakes.  Before, being found meant that Sam and Emma would be captured while Ruby was expendable.  Eventually he would be repossessed. His daughter would be raised to be nothing more than a scourge of mankind and Heaven.  But now the horrible scenario had somehow grown worse. Lucifer wouldn’t stop at that. They were coming for Ruby too. The archangel would force them to have more children only to take those kids away.  It was torture and pragmatism in one, the cruel efficiency that he loved. 

The whole fucking revelation had left Sam and Ruby mortified.  They spent the better part of the next morning hiking in silence.  He held her hand on and off, maybe to find comfort or show support—or maybe to feel the tangible evidence that they were together and okay.  That night Ruby lay beside him and they spooned, desperate for stability and peace. But as time went on, their fears had to take a backseat to the urgent demands of their survival, even if those demands weren’t nearly as dramatic as dwelling on their hypothetical torture.

Both Sam and Ruby’s shoes were wearing out.  They’d tried repairing them repeatedly, but the sheer number of miles they were covering meant that equipment was certain to fail inevitably.  With colder, wetter weather coming at the very least they needed clothes and shoes that weren’t falling apart. They tried checking rural homes and managed to find a replacement for Ruby, but Sam’s uncommon size was more difficult.  Against their better judgment they agreed that they’d have to start taking an occasional risk in order to locate something. Houses were ideal because they contained closets that usually had at least a few pairs of shoes, but they also started looking for dead bodies that might be wearing a pair large enough for him. 

After taking a long while to watch it for signs of life they cautiously approached a decrepit corner general store.  It was the only remaining building in what must’ve been a rest stop of sorts consisting of a handful of small establishments centered around the intersection of two minor highways.  The other buildings appeared to have been burnt to the ground some time ago. As they got closer a few bones were visible inside their ruins. An eight-foot gouge sliced through the asphalt of the crossroad and some grass had begun growing in the old wound.  Hopefully there were more dead inside.

As far as they could tell, there wasn’t any sign of living people—Croats, humans, demons, angels, or otherwise, for at least a quarter mile in each direction.  After catching Ruby’s eye, Sam nodded at the store, then gave a shrug, silently asking if she also wanted to risk investigating. In all probability the shelves would be as empty as everywhere else, but, all things being equal, it was worth a shot to search for bodies.  There probably were very low odds that a demon or angel would be hanging out inside an abandoned shop in the middle of nowhere. That meant that anyone they stumbled upon inside wasn’t likely to get away to fetch reinforcements.

She drew her knife, signaling that she was in favor of checking it out.  Sam readied his bow, then circled around to the front of the store. Ruby moved a few feet behind him, prepared to join in a fight if necessary, though neither of them wanted that while she was holding Emma.  Sam peeked through the grime-covered windows to check if he could see anyone inside. After waiting a few seconds he stepped through the door, which was already partially ajar.

Unlike the grocery store where they had found the pennies, this store hadn’t been left as a collection of striped shelves.  The place had probably been picked over a few times by people before them, but something strange had occurred somewhere in the mix.  The very center of the building had a ten-foot-wide, three-foot-deep crater in it, and the ceiling above it was seared black in a perfect circle.  The racks and display cases had all been smashed and left in piles of burst wood and twisted metal on the floor.

There wasn’t anywhere for Croats or other attackers to hide in the mess, so Sam relaxed slightly, lowering his bow.  He carefully climbed over the mounds of debris looking for anything useful. The sharp pieces of metal and broken glass made the work slow going, since he had to avoid cuts that might lead to an infection or other complication.  While he searched the building, Ruby occasionally kicked her way through the smaller piles, but had to focus her attention on watching out the filthy windows for anyone that might sneak up on them and keeping Emma as quiet as possible.

In the end Sam found six dead bodies in the ruined store.  Two of them appeared to have been dead for at least a year or so and were more deeply buried than the others.  The remaining four were barely covered at all, having instead been tossed against a wall, possibly to die there.  The more recently deceased group had probably only been dead for a couple weeks based on the mess that had accumulated below their skeletons.  The torn shirt and gnaw marks on one of the corpses might’ve been a wolf, coyote, and some other predator—he made a mental note to watch out for something like that while hunting.  

Despite finding the bodies, none of them were wearing the right size shoes.  He worked his way back to the front of the store where Ruby was keeping watch, then gave her a shrug to let her know that they had struck out once again.  She touched his upper arm, giving it a light, sympathetic squeeze.

He took another look at the crater in the center of the floor and shook his head while muttering, “What the hell happened?”

“Somebody put up a fight,” Ruby guessed.  “Or did something stupid. Either way, if I had to guess I’d say magic.”

“Humans versus witches?” Sam asked, eyeing the four relatively fresh bodies for a moment before they walked outside.  

“Most witches are humans,” she replied, casually disagreeing with his guess.

Personally, he was surprised that they hadn’t run into signs of witches or non-humans before then.  Magic had gone mainstream as early as a year before he had said yes to Lucifer— Well, not mainstream.  Magic had been acknowledged as a real force in the world when the fallen angels and demons saw that the writing was on the wall and stopped trying to hide in the shadows.  The world was ending. It was gonna go out with a bang…. Or at least that’s what everyone had thought. In actuality the bang had been more every faction screaming at and pummeling each other for three years and counting.  Somewhere in the mix witches existed, trying to survive in this changing world, only slightly better equipped than the humans.

As they circled the building, they saw that there was Enochian written on the exterior of the back wall.  Well, that changed his assessment of how the fight inside went down. There had been angels in the area and they had taken the time to leave a message.  At first Sam thought that it was done in paint, but upon closer inspection it was unmistakably dried blood. Really, it wasn’t that surprising. There were more dead bodies than paint cans nowadays.

“‘The highest honors and accords to whoever returns to me my nephilim and my favored vessel,’” Sam translated for Ruby.  “Well, he officially has a bounty on us.”

“So I guess that means that Michael finally figured out you’re in the wind too.”  She rubbed her lower back. “At least they’ll probably be fighting each other more.”

“There are gonna be more angels looking for us overall though.”

“If we can outlast them maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll thin each other out a bit.”  She absentmindedly bounced Emma a little. “It’s probably too much to ask for them to just finish themselves off.”

“I think Lucifer and Michael destroying each other is kinda what we’re trying to avoid,” he countered.

“Could’ve sworn it was just the collateral damage we cared about.”

He tilted his head acknowledging the superficial merits of her argument.  “I’m still worried about it.”

Ruby gestured at the vast expanse of nothingness behind them and the charred handful of buildings in front of them.  “These ruins must be protected at all costs.”

“There are still humans.  There’s still civilization.”

“It’s been half a year or more since we escaped.  How many humans could he have taken out in that long?”

“Too many,” he replied, taking her point.

“Less than before,” she said in an attempt to remind him that his absence was at least helping to mitigate the damage.

Sam smiled sadly at her.  “There still has to be someone left.  They’re out there somewhere….”

He walked up to the building, then placed his fingertips to the text.  After taking a moment to clear his mind he tried to focus on the ominous message before him.  He concentrated on the blood, the motion of the brush strokes that had written it, the angel who had scrawled it at the order of his master—there was a flickering image of an angel cleaning her blade— _ her _ master, Sam corrected himself.  The angel who had written the text had been female.  He pressed harder, trying to see where she was, but the vision became oversaturated as white light blinded him.

“Sam, can you hear me?” Ruby asked.

He opened his eyes to find that he was lying on the ground below the bloody message.  His backpack had prevented him from ending up on his back, so he was nearly curled up awkwardly on his right side.  Ruby was kneeling next to him holding his wrist to check his pulse.

“I’m okay,” he groaned while touching his aching head.  “Did I hit my head or is this my doing?”

“Your head had a pretty gentle landing, all things considered.  And you’ve got all that hair for padding.” She glanced back up at the bloody text, then down to where he’d fallen.  “Next time you try to force a vision you should do it sitting down.”

“I saw something.”

Her expression slowly turned slack at the realization that, even if it was brief, he had been able to trigger a vision.

“Precognition or clairvoyance?” she asked excitedly.

“I don’t know.  I mean she wasn’t here in the vision, but I don’t know where or when it was happening.”

She continued to check him for signs of some lingering illness or injury from the vision.  “You want to do another trance tonight or do you think you’d feel better just resting?”

“I think we should skip it tonight.”  The trances usually left him a little mentally fatigued and he was already drained from straining his powers.  “But definitely tomorrow. We’re finally starting to see some progress. I want to keep going.”

“Just be careful,” she warned.  “Without-your-visions-but-functional is better than with-your-visions-but-incapacitated.”

“I know.”

Ruby held Emma in one arm and cupped her small belly with the other, then nodded to his sprawled state.  “I’m not gonna literally carry everyone.”

* * *

The news that Michael’s forces might also be looking for them was plenty unwelcome, but on a practical level it didn’t really change anything.  They were still traveling for the sake of moving, attempting to not overharvest a single location and also to avoid establishing a more noticeable camp.  Hiding from essentially every faction was just as important as it was before. They didn’t have a long-term plan for how to deal with either winter or having a second child.  In preparation for the cooling weather, they turned slightly southwest, though they hadn’t yet figured out a destination that would take them clear of a freezing winter and not take them into marshland, deserts, or otherwise inhospitable climates.  

The fact that they had no idea what they were doing long-term terrified Sam.  When they were settled in camp for the night or during their little breaks throughout the day, he would sometimes sit, holding Emma, and find himself lost in unpleasant thoughts.  In those quiet moments his guilt and shame crept back into his heart. He didn’t have a plan and they needed one before it was too late. He was failing his daughter. It wasn’t fair to her or the other baby.

Ruby knew it all just as well as him.  He would spot her watching him with visible concern, though they rarely spoke about it.  There wasn’t anything to say apart from the same old words of encouragement not based in reality that were periodically trotted out in an attempt to keep the other one moving.  But all too often the bleak silence would only be broken by Emma asking for their attention and giggling while trying to initiate a game.

The breaking point came on an otherwise uneventful day.  It was about midday when they climbed a golden grassy hill to find a thirty-foot-wide riverbed cutting across the land ahead of them.  They stopped to stare at the worrying scene. Sam pulled the map from his pack and double-checked that they were where they’d expected to be.  The fucking river that they had been heading towards was gone entirely, having dried out. 

He nearly crumpled the map in his frustration, but stopped himself.  They had so little that that sort of indulgent destruction was dangerous.  Instead he knelt down, placed his bow onto the ground, then buried his face in his hands.  Physically and emotionally exhausted, he cried for a few minutes while Ruby stood behind him resting a hand on his shoulder sympathetically.

“Sam, we can’t stay here.”  Her voice was gentle, but he could hear her fatigue.

He wiped the tears from his face before looking up at her.  Emma was sleeping in the sling that was barely able to fit above Ruby’s growing belly.  They needed to keep moving, if only to get them through that day, but deep down he knew that clinging to that short-sighted thinking would eventually get them killed.

The two of them looked down at the landscape beyond the missing river.  It was fairly flat, dried grassland until the horizon. There was no sign of shade or greenery indicating other sources of water.  If they tried to cross it, they’d risk getting stuck out there without their most precious resource. That would become a more and more frequent problem as they kept traveling toward more arid climates.

“We can’t cross that,” Sam stated.  “Back when I was him, it was bad enough out that way, but with the river being gone….  There’s no telling how bad it gets. Do you want to skirt it or head back to the farmhouses?”

“Farms.”  She readjusted Emma’s sling so that it wasn’t pressing as much against her belly.  “Come on,” she told him as she took his hand. “We didn’t check all the farms. We might get lucky.”

He let her lead him away from that horrible moment, though his heart could barely feel the progress.  It took them four hours to backtrack and another two hours of searching, but they found a farm with a well that seemed to be somewhat functional despite there only being what appeared to be a couple feet of water in its reserves.  There was no way of knowing how long the well would last for, but it’d do for at least a few days. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a large amount of food in the area, so they couldn’t settle in for an extended stay.

Sam went hunting during the two hours before dusk and managed to bag some sort of bird he’d never seen that was a bit smaller than a chicken.  At that point the species of anything he caught hardly mattered beyond it not being humanoid. He brought the fowl back to the farmhouse to find that Ruby had set up their camp in the living room and barricaded all but one of the doors.  After getting inside, he sealed the last door, then joined her.

“It just needs a walnut tree, a few more birds, and a little more rain,” she said as she lay down on the shabby couch.  “So damn close, but not quite.”

“It’s out there somewhere,” he replied halfheartedly while starting a fire in the fireplace.  “We’ll just keep on looking.”

She tried to prop herself up on one elbow in order to give the impending serious conversation her full attention.  “Sam, we can’t take care of two infants on the move. We need to find somewhere we can stay.”

“Where are we supposed to go that’s safe?” he muttered while plucking the feathers from the bird.

“With your visions—“

Sam stopped what he was doing and looked up at her, exasperated by the thought that his powers were just supposed to deus-ex-machina away their problems.  “I don’t have anywhere near enough control for something like that. You’re asking too much of me,” he countered. “We can’t count on my visions to give us warnings.  Even if we could, what does that mean? How many minutes or hours of a headstart does that buy us? And if we get that warning,what—we’d have to up and run, abandoning everything that we’d created.”  

He could picture it.  Them settling in some house, unpacking their gear as they start using dressers and cupboard.  They’d sleep soundly in a bed with their kids in cribs or maybe someday even a nursery. With every passing week they’d give in to more creature comforts, which would lull them into a false ease.  Then, one day, they would be found out. The forces of either Lucifer or Michael would surround them. If by some stroke of luck, he and Ruby could grab their children and run away in time, how much could they really expect to take with them?  How could they ever recover from that? How could they even outrun that sort of ambush?

Ruby studied his pensive face before asking, “You’re saying that we just keep moving?  Even with winter? With two kids? Gambling with Croats every time we pass by some old town or city?”

“I want to stop,” he assured her.  “I want to find someplace—the farm—but that isn’t in the cards.”

“Crossroads deal?” she suggested in her desperation to at least get him brainstorming.

“There might be more than a few opportunistic demons willing to deal, but he controls the Crossroads.  If we make a deal he’ll know and he could follow the contract back to us.” Sam shook his head. “Wherever we go, he’ll be able to get to us.”

After a moment of hesitation, Ruby reluctantly commented, “He hasn’t been able to get to your brother.”

He wanted to laugh, but there wasn’t an ounce of amusement in him.  The idea of going to find Dean and his group of rebels was absurd. Not only would they be nearly impossible to find, but the rebels had spent years fighting Lucifer and his minions. The three of them might not have been affiliated with Lucifer anymore, but good luck convincing a camp full of paranoids.  “He’d never let us into their camp.”

“Emma’s powerful,” Ruby pointed out.  “They’ll want her on their side.”

He shot down the idea.  “They’ll just kill her.”

“Sam, we’re running out of time and options.  We can’t keep moving. Even if we make it past winter, Emma is already crawling and will start walking soon.  We won’t be able to cover as much distance while trying to wrangle her. You can’t shoot while holding a kid and I don’t know how I’m supposed to juggle a newborn and a one-year-old on my own.”  Ruby pursed her lips briefly to collect herself and underscore her point. “We need to be able to hold still and fortify. Dean is already fortified somewhere. I can probably do a locator spell on him with the right materials.”

As much as he didn’t want to admit it she had a point.  They would soon become even more vulnerable while traveling, which would make shelter all the more important.  Despite the dangers involved with going to Dean’s camp, at least in theory it was safer from Lucifer or Michael than the rest of the world.  Unfortunately, that didn’t quell his nerves.

“Dean’s gotta hate us,” Sam muttered.

“He probably does.”

“He’s gonna be warded.”

“You’re a full-blood sibling that doesn’t harbor hostility; that unlocks a lot of divination magic.  I can use some of your blood to get through most of the protective magic in place.” 

Sam was struck by a sickening thought.  As far as he knew, Lucifer wasn’t aware that that sort of spell could be performed to find the Dean.  If Lucifer ever did repossess him, that new invaluable piece of knowledge would suddenly be turned over to him.  With a little of his blood and a competent witch, the archangel might be able to find the location of Michael’s true vessel.  Never mind the headache that might ensue if Michael’s people captured him and knew about that spell.

He let out a quiet groan.  “Jesus. Are you’re telling me that Heaven or Hell, anyone who knows about that spell, can just bleed me and find Dean?”

Her face contorted in horror at the hypothetical, but she hastily corrected, “Fuck, no.  Thank god—or whatever. No. The spell only works with  _ your _ consent.  Nobody can make you, not even Lucifer while he’s possessing you.”  Her voice softened as she added, “Nobody can force you to do that to Dean.”

A tightness in his chest that he hadn’t realized was there lessened.  His mind had barely had time to even process the scenario, but his anxiety related to that sort of helplessness and abuse had been triggered in an instant.  He took a few seconds to calm himself, then nodded at her to assure her that he was alright. “Okay. That’s okay.”

She paused a beat to see if he was going to go back to arguing with her about the entire premise of seeking out Dean, but he didn’t.  He was resigning himself to the reality of the situation. This was probably their best hope, and Ruby seemed to have thought it through.

“What else do you need for the spell?” he asked.

Her expression lightened at him signaling his support.  “The hard part is that I’ll need an artifact that he’s touched.  You don’t happen to know where his car ended up, do you?”

“No, but I have another idea.” 


	14. Early Fall: The Bridge

They decided to make their way to Bobby’s house.  It was the last place that they’d known where Dean had been and there were plenty of things there that he had touched over the years.  They had spent three days debating the risks of going to such a sentimental place. In theory, Lucifer or Michael might’ve placed agents at the home on the off chance that Sam would go there, though Lucifer may have underestimated the likelihood thanks to having personally observed Sam’s hurt feelings regarding his father figure.  He sure as hell didn’t want to go back there, but unfortunately it was their best lead on finding Dean.

Michael’s forces knew that Sam was free and were undoubtedly also on the hunt.  Based on the glimpses he was getting, there was a fair amount of angel-on-angel violence happening, so hopefully that was slowing them down a bit.  Also, the army of Heaven didn’t have as much intel to go off of as Lucifer’s people. And yet, maybe there was a chance that Bobby’s house wouldn’t be under constant scrutiny—  How long would either side waste perfectly useful angels observing or potentially fighting each other over a stakeout location that had been untouched for many months and would likely be inhospitably cold by the time Sam and Ruby reached it.

With Sam’s growing ability to direct his visions they felt like it was worth the risk to scope out the old hunter’s home.  They would try to get in and out of the area as fast as possible. Ruby had suggested that she go on the mission to Bobby’s house while Sam and Emma stay a safe distance away in case it was being watched by angels.  Sam had shot it down, refusing to let her walk into what might be danger by herself, unable to teleport away. And if something did happen to Ruby, he wouldn’t even be able to feed Emma on his own. It was a gamble, but it was one that they would take together.

Neither of them liked the idea of heading north with fall approaching, but they didn’t have another plan for how to deal with winter.  They would push north early and as quickly as possible in order to hopefully minimize the damage. Rather than letting the changing seasons gradually overtake and pummel them over the long-haul, they would go confront it with the goal of getting to a more stable place to weather the storm.  With a little luck Dean’s rebels would be close to the familiar territory.

They managed to cover two weeks worth of ground without major incident, but on the fifteenth day Ruby started experiencing a strong bout of nausea and fatigue that slowed them down.  Despite time being of the essence, they decided that trying to push through would probably leave them in worse shape overall. They decided to camp for two consecutive nights in the same spot, giving Ruby a chance to recover for the entire day in between.  During the day of rest they stayed put except for an hour-long trip to a nearby creek to bathe and refill their canteens.

Sam was taking lead on their return trip to camp while Ruby carried Emma.  As they came over the last hill, he saw two people examining their campsite.  He quickly signaled for Ruby to get behind a nearby bush as he took cover there too.  Sam recognized their posture even if he didn’t know the vessels. He held up the ASL sign for "A" to let Ruby know that they were angels.  

With their angelic senses and flight, the pair would undoubtedly find them before long or at least report their camp’s location back to whichever faction they were loyal toward.  He knew that he had to go kill them. When he drew the angel blade and moved to stand up, Ruby gripped his arm. She shook her head at him, wordlessly asking him not to fight them.

He leaned in close to her ear and barely whispered, “They’ll find us.”  

She rested her head against his cheek, silently signaling her disappointed resignation.  He kissed her, then looked at the dozing Emma for a moment before he stood up.

Sam began moving as quietly as possible.  Their backs were to him, but he knew that their hearing was more sensitive than a human’s.  The wind was rustling the brush and trees, providing him a little cover. He crept forward, holding his breath, frightened that the sound of him exhaling might be what gave him away.  

They were talking to each other in Enochian, speculating about how long ago the campsite had been in use.  He recognized the words they were saying, but he could barely process the conversation. His heart was pounding, pumping adrenaline through him.  The anticipation of such a daunting fight narrowed his focus, turning everything else to static.

A twig snapped below his foot.  In that moment he felt like he had walked into certain death, but that only made him lunge forward into the fray with more conviction.  He was literally fighting for not only his life, but for Ruby and Emma’s too.

Sam lunged forward at the male angel as they turned to look at where the sound had come from.  He tried to stab the angel, but his jab was evaded. Instead of pulling back to attempt another strike, Sam grabbed the angel’s arms and used his momentum to spin the guy slightly, placing the angel he was holding between himself and the other one.  He pushed forward with all his might, hoping that maybe through some miracle he could knock back the middle man onto the female angel’s blade, but Sam was only human. He no longer had the strength of an archangel. The man didn’t budge.

His hands were still clamped on the male angel’s arms, leaving his angel blade too close to his foe to start an attack without exposing himself.  When the angel moved to grapple him, Sam fell backwards to the ground and kicked up, attempting to use the angel’s movement in a throw. Rather than kicking the angel in his stomach, he aimed lower, hitting the angel right in the crotch.  For all their strength and physical superiority, he knew that angels' heightened senses extended to several inconvenient human nerve clusters. The male angel was thrown over Sam, falling to the ground and briefly stunned by the well-placed kick.

The female angel moved forward and tried to stomp on Sam’s leg to break it, but he rolled sideways.  He had to scramble through the dried grass dodging a few swings of her blade. For a split second he lost track of her and barely had time to process that she’d blinked somewhere before she grabbed his hair from behind.  She pulled him up so that he was kneeling on the ground. He hastily reached back to grab her wrist with his offhand so that she couldn’t tear his scalp off. His other arm swung his blade over his head, backwards at her in a desperate attempt to block an attack or maybe land a lucky hit.  Dust and dirt were kicked up into the air around them as they tussled.

She deflected his blade away with her own, then moved her weapon towards his neck.  The male angel was just starting to regain his footing, a smug smile growing on his lips as he watched his sister prepare to kill or immobilize Sam.  But before the blade could get close to his throat Sam felt a sharp pain behind his eyes. Suddenly the female angel’s hands flew backwards, thankfully not incidentally slitting his throat or tearing out all his hair.  The expression on the male angel’s face was so shocked that Sam even spared a split-second glance over his shoulder to see what was happening. The female angel appeared to have fallen hard into the dirt.

Sam didn’t have time to wonder what had happened.  He turned back to the male angel and staggered to his feet.  The angel swung his blade at Sam, who barely managed to parry the attack.  He tried to counterattack, but out of the corner of his eye he could see that the female angel was getting back up.  They were flanking him. He raised his blade defensively, unsure which one would pounce first. But something worse happened:  Emma cried.

His heart stopped.  Both of the angels were between him and his daughter.  When the male angel turned to look towards the sound, the female angel sidestepped to block Sam from getting to her brother.  He wanted to yell for Ruby to run, but against angels, it’d be useless.

Rather than running, Ruby stepped out of hiding, still holding Emma in her sling.  At first Sam thought that her lips were trembling, then he noticed the blood dripping from her left hand.  She was whispering something.

The male angel saw her holding Emma and began walking towards her.  He demanded, “Give me that child.”

Ruby held her bloody palm at him, hissed her last few words in Latin, then squeezed her hand and twisted.  The angel froze in place as several of his vessel's bones audibly snapped. When she felt him try to teleport away she squeezed even tighter.  The effort made her feel faint and she fell to her knees, but she didn’t let go.

The female angel quickly glanced between Sam and the baby.  Her expression turned to shock at what Sam suspected was realizing the significance of the child.  Rather than continuing to fight him or save her sibling, she hesitated. He physically grabbed her before she could fly away.  She attempted to break his grasp on her, but before she could something strange happened.

Sam couldn’t quite parse the exact pieces of knowledge that he was apparently accessing, but he was struck by what he could only describe as intuition.  He had to stop her. More than that, he had to kill her in a way that wouldn’t give up their location. He dragged his blade across the surface of her throat while whispering in Enochian, “Go.”

The white-blue light of her grace flowed out from the wound as the angel watched in horror.  The wind caught the grace and drew it from her body. Its glow faded to little more than the illumination from the sun.  Somehow he knew that casting her grace into the wind would spread it over a huge area—with the current gusts it could be a hundred miles or more.  With the grace disperse, whichever side they belonged to would have a hard time locating the angels’ bodies, giving him and Ruby a head start.

He stabbed the now-graceless angel, killing her.  There was no white light or charcoal wings. The sight filled some disturbing part of him with pity, but he shook it off.  Then he quickly performed the same sequence on the equally-stunned male angel that Ruby had been confining.

After the second angel was dead, Ruby wobbled from fatigue and muttered, “Help.”  Her left arm held Emma and she reached out with her right hand in case she needed to break her fall.

Sam scrambled to catch her, managing to stop her before Emma or her belly hit the ground.

Her brow furrowed a bit, then whispered, “You’re bleeding.”

He cautiously felt his face, unsure of how he’d apparently been injured.  His nose was bleeding. He didn’t remember getting hit in the face. It was hardly an injury at all.  Meanwhile she looked like she could barely keep herself upright. “It’s nothing. Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Ruby weakly assured him.  “I just… it took a lot.”

“You held an angel.”  He pushed her hair back in order to check her face.  “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I held his meatsuit,” she corrected.  “He was fighting me for it. He was so surprised I don’t think it even occurred to him that he could ditch the body.”

“Angels don’t really have to abandon their vessels that often.”

“Save that one for the bag of tricks,” she muttered.

“That’s another last-resort tool,” he told her while helping her up.

“Yeah,” she agreed.  “I don’t really want counting-on-them-to-be-idiots to be plan A.”

“We need to keep moving,” he said apologetically.  “Eventually someone is gonna come searching for them.”

They hastily repacked their camp, then Sam carried Emma in her sling while helping Ruby.  She hobbled next to him while holding onto his shoulder. His arm was wrapped around her torso, supporting her.  They staggered through several abandoned crop fields, crushing the dried foliage as they marched. Whenever possible they walked in the shadows of the tree breaks between the fields, temporarily changing their heading in an attempt to throw any would-be pursuers off their trail, but there were still long stretches when they had to cross the fields.  Neither of them spoke. They were both too tired and they needed to put as much distance between themselves and the dead angels as possible before dark.

After an hour or so, Sam nearly tripped on a gopher hole.  He’d wrapped an arm around Emma, then broke his fall with the other, protecting his daughter.

Ruby checked him, looking for some unnoticed injury.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m just a little lightheaded.”

She grabbed the water jug from her bag and handed it to him.  He wordlessly took a long swig. It’d been several hours since he’d had any and they’d been traveling across fields that were largely exposed to the beating late-summer sun.

“We can make camp once we get between those two hills up there,” he told Ruby, trying to reassure himself just as much as her.

When they reached the pass between the hills, Sam helped lower Ruby into a sitting position at the base of a tree.  He leaned forward, bracing against it while he tried to collect himself. Below him she was propping herself up with one arm in a display of just how fatigued she was.

“I think I need to lie down,” she muttered.  “I’m feeling dizzy.”

He knelt down in front of her, then offered her a hand.  Once she was safely on the ground he took out the first aid kit and started bandaging her palm.  “We both need to recover.”

“One fight,” she sighed while closing her eyes in frustration or disappointment.  “One fight and we’re this fucked up.”

“It was two angels,” he replied, excusing their pathetic state as he tied off the shoddy bandage.  “You were having a battle of wills with an angel, you’re pregnant, and you were sick to begin with.  We just crossed who-knows-how-many miles in a couple hours, mostly in the sun, while carrying everything.  We’re allowed to be fucked up.”

Emma wriggled in her sling.  Her little arms waved about, indicating that she wanted out.  “Mama.”

Sam picked their daughter up and held her so that she could see Ruby.  “Mama’s here. She’s just a little tired.” He wasn’t sure he wanted her grabbing and trying to climb on her mom while Ruby was so weak.

Emma looked back and forth between them with a confused expression.  She tried to crawl off Sam’s lap four times, but he kept redirecting her.  When she started whimpering, he held her up and blew a raspberry on her stomach to try distracting her.  Emma giggled for a moment, though as soon as he stopped she huffed a bit. He could’ve sworn she was offended by his cheap ploy to buy her off.

“It’s fine.  Give her here,” Ruby said when the infant began flouncing about.

He placed Emma down in front of Ruby, who began cradling her with her good arm.  After a minute or so of snuggling, Emma started nursing. They both watched their daughter fall asleep.

Ruby quietly said, “Make sure I don’t pass out and roll onto her.”

Sam scooted to be closer to them, then lay down on his side facing Ruby.  He positioned himself just on the opposite side of Emma. His arm draped across the small gap between them to help hold them both up.

“We’ve got enough food for a day or two.  I can go hunting in the morning,” he told her.  “The rest of the day we’ll just stay here. Neither of us is in shape to be running.”

“After we get a little bit away from last night’s campsite, let’s try to find a house to sleep in.  I think we’ve both earned a night in an actual bed.”

* * *

Sam exhaled a long sigh, then let loose his arrow.  He climbed out from cover to go mercifully finish off his prey.  His chest felt tight as he slit the chocolate labrador’s throat. He hated killing dogs, but after several exhausting days Ruby and he needed a couple substantial meals.  After draining and dressing the carcass, he draped it over his shoulder and walked back to the house where they were spending the night.

The house was an odd drab salmon color with already boarded-up windows and a pickup truck that had crashed through one of the corners of it, but after barricading the demolished room it was serviceable enough for them to stay the night.  The old, wooden boards of the back patio creaked as he approached the back door, so he whistled as he entered the back door to let Ruby know it was him. She was in the kitchen, looking for anything worth taking, and looked up when he came in.

“Here.  I can cook,” she told him while she extended her hands to take the dead dog.

He was sure that he looked ragged.  The fight with the angels had left him with a fair number of aches that hadn’t yet subsided, but she only seemed to be fairing moderately well herself.  He nodded to her still-bandaged hand, then replied, “You’re hurt. I’ll do it—”

“You’ve done enough for today.”  She took the dog from him. “If you won’t rest, then you can take Emma for a bit, but you’re done working.”

He relented, allowing her to grab the hunting knife from his belt so that she could carve up the meat.  With his immediate chores literally taken out of his hands, he cleaned the blood off his palms, then crouched down and picked up Emma.  She giggled, reaching out for his face, apparently delighted by his return. He bounced her a few times before starting to carry her around the house to explore.

As he wandered, he picked up objects to show the infant.  He tried to explain the many strange artifacts which were unfamiliar to her.  Clocks kept track of seconds, minutes, and hours, three concepts that lacked much significance.  Photographs were captured moments in time made as thin as paper, then often preserved behind glass.  Refrigerators were for when there was too much food but you were able to keep it for later. Mirrors—  Sam froze in front of the large mirror in the master bedroom.

He looked different than he remembered.  The skin at the top of his forehead was bruising slightly, probably from when the angel had yanked his hair.  His cheekbones were more pronounced and set off against his chin-length brown locks. The frantic pace of the last few days had left him unable to shave, so his normal whiskers were turning into a short beard.  In certain features—the beard, the nose, the corners of his eyes—he could almost see some resemblance to his dad. He’d never noticed those before, but it made sense.

Framed in the mirror’s reflection, Emma gripped his shirt, hugging him.  He had a child who was only a little older than he had been when his mother had died—when his dad had taken his two young children and ran.  Hell, at thirty-two years old Sam wasn’t even that far off in age from what his dad had been at the time. How far things had come. How wrong they had gone.  And yet somehow the comparison chilled him.

He kissed his daughter’s forehead, then thoughtfully watched her black eyes swirl with golden wisps.  He wasn’t his dad. “No matter what, you’re my little girl,” he said softly. “And I love you.”

* * *

Sam had to reluctantly agree that the labrador had tasted pretty good.  He had had the wisdom to not mention that the dog had been brown prior to being skinned, thus avoiding any unsavory chocolate jokes that Ruby would’ve inevitably made.  The meal was larger than any that they’d had since the fight with the angels and it gave them an almost instant second wind. Rather than doing anything stupid like setting off early before getting a good night’s sleep, they took one last pass of the house before bedtime, looking for anything of use.

Ruby located a new sewing needle, some medicine for their first aid kit, and a new, larger shirt that still only barely accommodated her ever-growing belly.  Meanwhile, Sam had found two truly priceless treasures: a new pair of shoes and a beloved snack.

Ruby examined the styrofoam cup of dehydrated noodles and powdered chicken bouillon with a skeptical eye.  “It’s only 320 calories and it’s kinda bulky.”

He held out his hand to take it back from her and spoke through the gleeful smile that was plastered on his face.  “I’ll carry it.”

She turned it over, looking for an expiration date or some other indicator of quality, then handed it back to him.  “Do those things taste particularly good?”

“They taste like undergrad,” he replied.  “When I was at Stanford I’d eat these all the time.  They were less than a buck in the student grocery store.  That and steamed white rice for breakfast was how I could afford to eat during my first year.”

“Did you get a job after that?”

“I tutored a few kids.  Mostly I got partners.” Sam nodded wistfully at the memories.  “I was that boyfriend who meant well, but was always short on cash.”

“At least you can eat out like a pro,” she replied.  “Are you just as good at blow jobs?”

He gave a small, innocent shrug.  “I never had any complaints.”

“With a famous face like yours, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you never will again.”  Ruby speculated. “Imagine the surprise it must’ve been to turn on the news and find out that the guy who used to blow you in college is now the Devil.”

“One of them was actually a demon, so I’m guessing the reveal was kinda lost on him.”

She chuckled at the discovery.  “You used to fuck demons before me?  You’ve got a kinky side, you know that?”

“One,” he clarified.  “And I didn’t know he was a demon until after I was possessed.”

The smug look on Brady’s face had been short-lived.  When he saw that Sam was being worn by the creator of his species he’d nearly turned sheet-white, fearful that the liberties that he had taken with his master’s vessel would come back to bite him.

“You know what they say”—Ruby blinked her eyes black—“you never go back.”

“Ha ha,” he said dryly while rolling his eyes.  He placed his hand on her belly to highlight one of her least-demonic qualities, then leaned in for a kiss to hit another.  When he pulled back at the end of the moment of affection he whispered, “Tell me again how you’re some scary, hellish monster?  How the mighty have fallen.”

“Trust me.  In this world, we’re all fallen.”

“I don’t know if you’re a poet or a smartass.”

She tucked a few stray hairs behind his ear.  “The best poets are smartasses.”

He didn’t have a cute retort, just unbridled affection.  Rather than replying, he cupped the back of her head and kissed her passionately.  After a quick glance to make sure that their daughter was asleep, he slid his hand down Ruby’s panties.  Ruby nodded subtly while biting his lower lip and undoing his jeans.

Afterwards, Sam’s gaze drifted down the length of her body, passing over her belly, then past her to where Emma was sleeping in her bassinet.  For the moment his stomach was full and his family was safe. It was a fleeting peace, but profound and as good as any he was going to get. He fell asleep spooning Ruby, hand resting gently on her belly.

 

_There was the flapping of wings.  Munkar was walking through a forest.  He held out his hand in front of him, searching for some sensation.  After a long while his eyes settled on a portion of the leaf-covered forest floor.  The angel knelt down and brushed aside some leaves, revealing the skeletons of two adults and an infant._

_He touched the adult skeleton with the snapped neck, then said, “I need to speak with you.”_

_The bones shuddered.  From the ether thin tendrils of muscle began regenerating along the upper torso and head.  When the jawbone was loosely attached, the skull slowly lifted itself up to look at the angel, though it had to wait nearly a whole minute for its eyes to form._

_Munkar held up the picture of Sam.  “Have you seen this man?” When the skeleton nodded, he asked, “Where did he go?”_

_The corpse’s bony hand feebly dragged along the ground until it was aimed northwest, then pointed.  He touched the skeleton’s skull once again, causing the flesh to wither and turn to dust. The bones collapsed to the ground in a lifeless pile as the angel disappeared, flying northwest._

* * *

They continued on their journey to Bobby’s house.  For nearly a week they managed to make good time without any complications.  Sam kept catching visions: angels whispering to each other secret concerns about some growing illness, Lucifer’s armies of demons razing human settlements, a witch having an angel blade stabbed through his heart—but none of them indicated that the bodies of the two dead angels had yet been discovered, though there was no way of knowing for sure that they were in the clear.  It wasn’t as though his visions were comprehensive.

While they traveled the leaves began to turn yellow.  As objectively beautiful as it might be, it was disheartening to see.  The gradual change of hues around them became a clock slowly counting down to what would inevitably be a great hardship.  A week later the cricket chirps that had been something of a lullaby to them over the last couple months began to dwindle as the summer turned to fall.

They raided more houses looking for new clothes that they could begin layering for warmth at night.  It wasn’t yet to the point of rain and long nights huddled together, but they both knew that it would come before too long, so they pressed forward as quickly as they could.  Then, nearly halfway through their journey, they hit another snag.

There was a roughly-hundred-foot-wide river in their way, and the only bridge across it required them to pass through a large town.  If they wanted to cross at another point their options were bleak. In order to reach the next known bridge to the east they would likely have to add another week to their journey, making the start of winter and the birth of the baby that much more worrying.  Traveling west along the river took them off the edge of their map and into a whole host of unknowns. They’d tried to find a boat or some other craft to cross the river with, but nothing appeared safe enough to risk the voyage. After considerable debating, they decided to slowly skirt the town for as long as they could before making a straight line for the bridge.  

The real question was how to keep Emma quiet while they traveled through the potentially Croat-infested territory.  A few weeks earlier they had found a pacifier for her, but she had a way of spontaneously spitting it out of her mouth whenever she wanted to practice talking.  Nearly a half hour of brainstorming turned up nothing until Ruby held up one of the copper pennies that they used to put Sam into his trances. The unenthusiastic expression of her face told him that she also didn’t like the idea of using magic on their daughter….  And yet after another hour of trying to find a better alternative they didn’t have anything.

They waited until dusk to attempt the trance; that way if it was successful they could quickly try to sneak across the bridge under the cover of night.  Sam held Emma on his lap and ran his finger through her soft, wispy brown hair, hoping that that would soothe her, making the trance easier. Ruby wrapped the pennies in the cloth they used for him, then started gently rubbing Emma’s wrists.  She didn’t attempt to give any instructions as she did for him, but instead Ruby made a quiet shushing sound. A few minutes later the infant was sleeping soundly.

“She can still wake up; it’ll just be harder,” she told Sam as she repacked the pennies in her bag.  “If something happens and you need to snap her out of it rub the insides of her wrist counterclockwise for a minute.”

He didn’t like the implications of the last statement.  The only situation he could think of when his less-experienced self would have to wake up their daughter was if something major happened to Ruby.  He looked at the town, knowing perfectly well that her concern was justified. Unfortunately, they were getting desperate.

They redistributed their loads slightly in preparation for sneaking through the town and for a potential fight.  Sam carried Emma in a sling, freeing up Ruby to have whatever mobility her noteworthy belly would allow. They double-checked the cloth wrappings on their pots and other metal supplies so they wouldn’t clank loudly if they had to run.  Against his instincts, he put his bow on his pack rather than carrying it. If there were Croats, there would probably be more than he could take out with arrows and he didn’t want to risk the bow being broken as some sort of improvised melee weapon.  Losing it would leave the rifle as their only ranged weapon, which felt nearly suicidal if there really were Croats in the area. Instead, Sam carried the angel blade and Ruby took the hunting knife.

Rather than going through the bulk of the town, they approached along the bank of the river.  With a little luck they could slip in along the dark bank, quickly cross the bridge, then descend on the other side where there was little more than a short roadway leading into a forested area.  Of course, unless they were incredibly fortunate, they would have to be somewhat exposed while getting onto and off of the bridge. The thing was elevated above the water, meaning that there would be some sort of ramp where it merged with ground-level roads.  Usually that sort of obstacle was only half a block long or so, but it likely wouldn’t have a lot of cover.

Sam studied the terrain as best he could from their far-off vantage and sighed.  “I miss being able to fly.” It was one of the only positive things about his time being possessed by Lucifer.

“Preaching to the choir,” she replied while finishing double-checking the bow to make sure it was secure.

“You should take Emma,” he told her, suddenly hating the thought of the infant not being with her mom.  In a crisis he should be able to hold off the Croats while giving them a chance to escape, but he couldn’t do that if he was holding their daughter.

“You can protect her and I can’t move too easily with her anymore.”  Ruby touched his cheek, caressing it with her thumb. “Anyway, it’s your turn to carry her.”

He appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood by making a joke rather than bringing up or explicitly dismissing the risks.  His hand settled on her belly, hoping to feel it shift one last time before the dangerous task ahead of them, but no such luck.  It seemed that both their kids were sleeping. He took a moment to gather himself, then they set off.

They trudged along the muddy riverbank for as long as they could before the water encroached too much, forcing them up onto the more prominent paved walkway.  To their left was the treacherously cold river that looked jet black in the night. On their right side, beyond a two-lane waterfront road, the shells of buildings loomed, broken windows catching the dim moonlight like fangs.  

There were countless decaying bodies strung up on both sides of the bridge.  Their clothes fluttered in the wind occasionally set off by the quiet creak of the ropes swinging.  Somehow the sight and sound of the bodies made Sam feel colder. Neither one of them risked drawing attention by commenting on the ghastly spectacle.  Those sort of grim theatrics were a warning. Something had happened there independent of a possible Croat infestation.

Sam strained his ears and eyed their surroundings for signs of danger, but the whole thing was overwhelming.  There were so many places that an enemy could come from or use as a hiding place. Over the months he’d grown accustomed to the wilderness; its simple beauty and grand expanses.  Now the blocks of buildings, the burned-out cars, concrete barriers, broken lamp posts—everything was shadows hiding the unknown, jarring reflections, hard surfaces carrying sounds too far astray.  Civilization had become terrifying to him. No. Civilization had become uncivil.

Upon closer inspection, in order to gain access to the bridge, they would have to circle a block so that they were coming at it from the direction of the town center.  They began moving down the parallel road as quietly and as quickly as possible. About halfway to the first street intersection, Ruby touched his arm, then signaled at what looked like a narrow alleyway.  He cautiously peeked down it. The alley cut straight through the block in the direction they were headed and appeared empty except for a dumpster.

Sam’s heart was hammering as they crept through the alleyway.  He could only imagine that Ruby was suffering the added stress of the baby flailing around from all the adrenaline pumping through their shared bloodstream.  Despite lacking a pleasant view, the walls of the alley had been designed with windows every fifteen feet or so. Not only was the tight space claustrophobic, but there was also a chance that feral arms might reach out at them with hardly any warning.

They were only about forty feet from reaching the other side of the block when the sound of shuffling footsteps echoed down the alley.  It was coming from inside the buildings next to them on their right. They pressed themselves against the wall to avoid being seen through a window and waited for it to recede.  Sam was holding his breath, praying that they would go unnoticed. He glanced down at Emma to make sure that she was still sleeping.

When the footsteps had faded, they continued toward the main street.  From there they could get onto the bridge, getting clear of the buildings after half a block.  Unfortunately, one of the unforeseen problems of the narrow alley opening was that they had less visibility of the main street, meaning that they’d be taking a larger gamble stepping out that way.  Yet turning around meant passing all of the windows of buildings that might’ve been hosting Croats, only to have to circle another two and a half sides of the block they’d nearly finished navigating.  

He gestured at the alley’s opening, then used his hands to diagram the problem with the acute angle of visibility.  She tilted her head to the side, acknowledging his concern, then began her own set of improvised signs and gestures at the alleyway windows and the unexplored half of the block.   Her hands alternated rising and falling—uncertainly weighing their unpleasant options. He pursed his lips for a moment before pointing at Emma, miming sleeping, then pointing at where he might wear a watch, silently asking her how much time they had before the trance would wear off.  She shrugged in an unconcerned way, but after she looked back at the long alley she gestured, indicating the length of the route that backtracking would involve and rocked her head back and forth anxiously. He knew his vote. He touched his chest before pointing at the shorter route, out onto the street, toward the bridge.  She nodded in agreement, then raised her knife.

They rounded the corner and didn’t see any Croats, so they hurried for the bridge.  The street was littered with broken-down cars, many of which were little more than rusting husks.  As they got onto the bridge they saw fewer cars. It had been cleared in places close to where the ropes that dangled the bodies had been affixed.  

In their haste to get across, they rushed past a small shipping truck to see three Croats standing in the middle of the bridge.  The male and one female were covered in a few visible ulcers but otherwise seemed fairly intact. A second female Croat had a bone protruding from her left arm, turning the flesh around it a sickly green and making her weak enough to stagger slightly.  The three of them turned to see Sam and Ruby. The healthy female let out a low growl, but thankfully none of them screamed.

Sam raised his left arm into position to protect Emma as he lifted the angel blade.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ruby ready herself for a fight. The two healthier Croats charged at them, the man going after Sam and the woman going after Ruby.  

As soon as the attacker was in range Sam dodged to the side, shielding his daughter as he moved, and swung at the Croat.  His strike landed, cleanly cutting several inches deep, straight through his liver, spilling a huge amount of blood. The Croat stumbled a bit but was too enraged to notice the massive blood loss.  The creature spun around to make another attack, but was met by Sam’s blade slicing the side of his neck as he turned, severing the jugular. Sam shoved the disabled Croat to the ground to finish bleeding out, then hurried to help Ruby.

She had managed to land at least three hits, including somehow nearly taking off her opponent’s right arm from the elbow down, but the damn thing was still coming at her.  It slammed her into the side of a car. Ruby managed to dodge a second attack but was being pressed back, dangerously close to a pile of rubble full of broken glass and twisted metal.  Sam held Emma to him and ran for her. He grabbed the Croat from behind, pulling it back so that Ruby wouldn’t tumble backward. Once he’d given her some space, he quickly slit the Croat’s throat, holding her until she fell, safely limp.

“Sam!” Ruby hissed while holding her belly.  For a split second all he could think about was that something was wrong with the baby, but then she pointed behind him.

He turned around to see the gangrenous Croat almost on him.  The female Croat grabbed at Emma, but Sam couldn’t move to block the attack in time.  He jerked, wanting nothing more than for the ravenous woman to not touch his daughter.  The Croat’s bloody hands stopped a few inches short, then she suddenly flew backwards through the air, having been launched by some unseen force.  She must’ve flown at least a hundred feet away in a high arc, back in the direction from which they’d just come. The Croat landed on top of an abandoned car with a very loud thwack and the crinkle of safety glass breaking.

Sam felt like all the blood must’ve left his body—well, some of it had.  A few drops were trickling from his nose. He could hardly process what had just happened, but before he could begin speculating on how it had occurred, his stomach dropped at the realization that he’d heard the impact from so far away.

“Run,” he told Ruby while wrapping an arm around her in an attempt to help her.

As they ran across the bridge, he could hear the sound of many hurried footsteps a ways behind them.  Sam glanced back over his shoulder to see dozens of Croats converging on the damaged car, having been drawn by the crashing sound.  He redirected Ruby so that they could take cover behind the burnt-out shell of a van. They were only twenty feet from the end of the bridge, where several trucks had been positioned to apparently block cars from escaping the town, though there were gaps between them big enough for people to go through.

He carefully peeked around the front of the van to see how bad the situation was.  In the distance he could see at least thirty Croats swarming the car where the body had landed.  The mob was largely climbing over itself to see if there was any prey to be had at its center, but that wasn’t the thing that worried him the most.  At least ten other infected had apparently deemed the frenzied pile to be too much competition and instead had started roaming the nearby area. They had started staggering up onto the bridge, unbeknownst to them, toward Sam and Ruby.

“We need a distraction,” he whispered.

Ruby picked up a few golf-ball-sized chunks of concrete from the ground next to her and handed them to him.  “I fucking hope you played a sport.”

Still crouching, he turned around and looked for the largest windows he could see that were nearby, then replied, “Soccer.”  He threw two of the chunks, but his aim wasn’t stellar and they landed too far away to audibly entice the Croats. He was getting ready to make another attempt when Ruby touched his arm.  

“Archery,” she corrected him, then started untying the bow.

“We’re idiots,” he muttered while grabbing an arrow.

“It’s a stressful situation.  We’re allowed—”

She didn’t have time to finish before the arrow shattered the windshield of a sedan on the far side of where the Croats were exploring the bridge.  He hardly waited to confirm that the Croats had turned around to investigate the second car before grabbing Ruby, helping her up, and running with her for the treeline beyond the trucks at the end of the bridge.

* * *

Emma started shifting and whimpering as they hurried through the woods away from the Croat-infested town.  Sam held her close while making soothing sounds, but they pressed forward for as long as they could, trying to get some distance between themselves and the horde.  The deeper they got the less moonlight penetrated the forest canopy. At a certain point they had to slow down or risk tripping in the darkness.

He put down his bow, helped lower Ruby into a sitting position, then pulled his daughter from her sling in order to calm her down.  “It’s alright, Emma. You’re alright.” When he was fairly confident that she wouldn’t start bawling he knelt down next to Ruby. “Are you okay?  Is the baby okay?”

“I’m okay,” Ruby replied.  She was holding her belly, waiting for some reassuring movement.

Sam placed his hand on her belly, but he didn’t feel anything.  After a minute of silence and stillness, he said, “We need to keep going.”

They moved as quickly as they could away from the town.  It didn’t even matter that they were going slightly off course.  Both of them just wanted to get far enough from the Croats that they could rest.  Navigating so that they swung wide around the bridge was a problem for their future selves, who might be fortunate enough to have survived the night.  Eventually they found a place that would serve as a decent campsite—and not a moment too soon.

Sam could feel the combat high leaving his system.  He probably had barely enough time to get the minimum necessary work done before he would pass out.  While Ruby drank some water he rolled out the sleeping mat and unpacked a wool blanket.

She finished her turn with the canteen, then handed it to him and asked, “What the hell happened back there?  It looked like that Croat was launched from a fucking cannon.”

“I don’t know.  It was coming at us, then it just….”  Sam reached up and touched the small amount of blood above his upper lip.  He felt like his knees might buckle from either his sudden lightheadedness or the weight of his realization.  “It looked like telekinesis.”

“Telekinesis?”  Ruby raised her hands.  “Don’t look at me. My telekinesis hasn’t worked since they hexed me into my meatsuit.”

He took a long swig of water, then rubbed his face, though it didn’t do much to help him regain his composure.  “I think it might’ve been me.”

“You have telekinesis?” she asked, visibly shocked.  “And, I’m sorry— you _think_?”

“I’ve used telekinesis twice,” he explained.  “The first time it was like a reflex. I was trying to save Dean.  It just kicked in when I was scared.”

“Like just now,” she commented while slowly nodding.  “Did you do it intentionally the second time? You ever get the hang of this thing?”

“Second time was even less control.”  He hesitated a moment, reluctant to bring up the unpleasant events surrounding it.  “When I was going through withdrawals I threw myself around Bobby’s panic room.”

Ruby’s lips thinned and her eyes flicked down to the ground in a display of guilt.

He continued, eager to not dwell on that problematic time.  “So yeah, throwing someone isn’t really out of the realm of possibility.”

“All the work trying to improve your control with the visions could’ve helped reawaken other powers,” she speculated.  “Maybe you should try to practice it sometime.”

It would be nice to just grab a rabbit with telekinesis instead of having to risk snapping their few precious arrows.  As far as he could tell he’d never had any real control over it, but he supposed if he could start to get the hang of focusing his visions, then maybe he could learn to harness yet another power.  It was definitely intriguing, but they had more pressing concerns. He was beyond exhausted.

They didn’t risk having a fire.  Ruby cast the embers spell on a few rocks, but they kept them inside a pot to reduce the illumination.  The two of them lay down, spooning on their shared sleeping mat. Sam’s hand rested anxiously on her belly.  

When the baby finally moved he pressed his face into Ruby’s hair and started crying.  He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not. It would’ve been simpler if they had lost the baby, but the thought made his heart ache.  As bad an idea as it might’ve been, he wanted to have it. He wanted his little family. They were the only good left in his world and he selfishly wanted the second child to be part of it.


	15. Fall: Returning to the Lost Home

As it got colder they had to stop bathing in the rivers and creeks for fear of getting hypothermia.  Instead they were forced to heat water a pot at a time, then use a rag to wipe themselves off. It was a tedious process made worse by them only undressing and washing a limb at a time in order to keep the rest of their bodies warm.  The unfortunate result was that personal hygiene became such a labor-intensive chore that they did it as infrequently as possible. That being said, they still had to wash Emma at least twice a day.

The mild musk that he undoubtedly had and his newly-forming beard made Sam feel like he’d at least somewhat fallen into the archetype of an outdoorsman.  By no means did he feel like an expert in wilderness survival. The prospect of winter scared the hell out him. But he’d grown used to sleeping on the ground, he could hike thirty miles a day with a full pack and an infant, and he could mortally wound prey from over 100 yards with at least half his shots.  He’d adapted to their circumstances. He’d continue to adapt if it meant keeping his kids safe.

To her credit, Ruby had also found her stride.  Despite whatever aches or unpleasantness may have come from the fact that she was probably approaching her third trimester, she pressed on without complaint.  She even set a pace that he found borderline grueling. Hopefully her demonic fortitude (or stubbornness) would endure and maybe even be a trait found in their kids.  In this new, harder world, resilience was the name of the game.

The longer they walked, the farther north they headed, the more they could feel the change.  The very palette of nature was transforming as colors muted, and the chill air made it harder to smell and caused animals to hide away in their burrows.  As they hiked, a group of geese flew over them, heading south. Sam grimaced at the unwelcome sight. It felt like a personal criticism.

“We’re nomads and we’re heading north going into winter,” he muttered.

Ruby spared him a sidelong glance, hearing the negativity in his voice.  She nudged his side. “Chin up, big guy. It might not be the farm, but we’re making our play for something solid.  We’re trying to stop being nomads.”

He sighed, then looked down at Emma, who he was holding and quietly said, “You hear that, sweetie.  We’re trying to find you a home.”

When it came down to it he’d been a nomad for his whole life.  With the exception of college, he’d always traveled from place to place, looking for….  There was a time when the satisfaction of helping others had been his motivation. Saving people.  Hunting things. That was his family’s identity. Now there was no one left to save. No one would take his help even if he was in a position to offer.  His sole purpose was his new family. And finding a home—somewhere stable and safe with four walls and a roof—that was his mission.

Gradually the sky became more and more cloudy until they had days where there wasn’t even a hint of blue.  Overcast days hadn’t been a problem in spring when they were traveling without a destination. They had only been fleeing.  Now though they were trying to find a single house in a vast countryside; accuracy was important. 

The first step that they took was to create a compass.  Sam might not have been an Eagle Scout growing up, but as he pilfered through an abandoned house looking for crafting materials he counted himself lucky that his dad had taught him some tricks from his days as a marine.  He pulled a kitchen magnet from the freezer door, rubbed it against a sewing needle in order to magnetize it, then stuck the needle through a small piece of cork that he had cut from a trivet. The tiny, lightweight compass would be easy to carry and when placed in water would float, rotating until the needle pointed north.

The next adjustment that they made was that they stopped traveling cross country whenever possible.  It was more dangerous to travel along roads, but following landmarks that were depicted on maps meant that they could tell where they were with relative accuracy.  Whenever practical they preferred to walk along other landmarks that were less frequently traveled, such as railroad tracks or ridges of hills, but they made do with whatever was available to them.

When they were forced to walk across plains or through forest they tried their best to practice dead reckoning.  They would mark their location on their map, then using their compass one of them would monitor the direction they were walking while the other periodically counted their steps per minute.  Whenever they took a break Sam would attempt to calculate the distance they had covered, then using the compass heading and their surroundings he’d make an educated guess at their location. There was a fair margin of error, but every other day or so they’d run across a landmark to help correct their estimates.

The arrival of occasional instances of snow brought new challenges.  It obscured the ground in front of them, making it harder to follow roads.  When they walked along train tracks, Sam had taken to carrying a long stick, which he’d push along the track’s metal rail in front of them so that he could anticipate it changing direction.  He’d only tripped over the metal rail, hiding below the snow, once before learning that they needed to be mindful of bends.

Apart from making it harder to see where they were headed, the snow also meant that they were traveling slower.  Trudging through even just a few inches of snow became tiring when that was all they did for hours on end. Then when they did stop to rest it was easier for them to lose track of the direction they were headed.  After one time when some fresh snowfall had started erasing their tracks, they had learned to place their packs to indicate the direction they’d just traveled from in order to avoid accidentally getting turned around.  All-in-all, the worsening weather was working against them in nearly every way imaginable.

* * *

The journey to Bobby’s house ended up taking sixty-four days—neither of them knew the exact date and they could only guess at the month based on the changing weather.  They had managed to find three cars to help them on their way, but none of them had had enough gas to get more than a hundred miles. Upon reaching the Lincoln County border south of Sioux Falls, they slowed their pace.  While Bobby’s scrap yard was located a ways south of the city, Sioux Falls had still been a city of over 175,000 people. After Lucifer’s rise the place had been ravaged by Croats, demons, and angels alike, then left to harbor who-knew-what.  There were undoubtedly Croats lurking around the city, but Sam suspected there were many more dangers hidden in the midst of the urban setting.

When they got close to Bobby’s house they stopped to make sure that Emma was fed and changed.  The last thing they needed was for them to be approaching a potential trap when the infant started crying.  They debated putting her into another trance, but decided against it; the side effects of using magic on an infant were unclear.  The two of them just didn’t want to risk such an extreme move a second time.

They cautiously approached the home from the back, through the salvage yard.  Pillars of crumpled and rusting cars towered over the narrow walkways that weaved through the mess.  The similarities to the Croat-infested town made Sam’s stomach churn with acid. Dead leaves had fallen from the trees surrounding the property and covered the ground.  Rather than risk the identifiable sound of crushing dried leaves under the sole of a shoe, they shuffled, sliding their feet along the ground, hoping that the sound of the displaced leaves would resemble them being knocked around in the wind.

It had been nearly six years since Sam had been to the house.  For most of his life it had been the closest thing that he’d had to a home.  It was true that, while hunting with his dad and brother, he’d stayed at motels far more often than Bobby’s, but this place had been a constant, a place he could come to when he was in need… until the end.

He hadn’t dared return after finding out that he was Lucifer’s vessel.  On a handful of occasions he’d called Bobby in an emergency, to get word of some impending crisis to Dean and the other hunters.  Bobby had still answered his calls—that was more than he had gotten from his brother. 

But Sam had always hated calling.  Only a few days before he’d quit hunting Bobby had been possessed by a demon and told him that what he’d done in freeing Lucifer was unforgivable.  After the demon was out the real Bobby had assured him that it was just the demon talking, but he’d still seen another loved one’s face contort with disdain while saying such hurtful words.  He’d tried to shrug it off, but that moment of feeling that he’d failed enough to lose another piece of his family… it had haunted him until the moment he said ‘yes’ and beyond. Even after the falling out with Dean, when he’d call Bobby he'd hated hearing the mixture of disappointment and concern in his father-figure’s voice.  He hated knowing on some level that  _ he _ was what Bobby had been afraid of.  

Placing his hand on the knob to the back door, Sam was struck by the sinking feeling that they were walking into a trap.  It wasn’t the intuition that he’d developed from sharing a mind with Lucifer. It was the culmination of his guilt and fear, the thought that inevitably something else would go wrong—and what better place than somewhere so close to his heart?

He gripped the angel blade, turned the knob, then slowly entered, taking great care to move as quietly as possible.  The door’s hinges creaked, causing him to hold his breath for a moment, straining his ears for footsteps or flapping wings.  He could swear that the sound of his boots on the gritty kitchen floor was loud enough to hear across the entire house. The wind flowing through a broken window made a set of faded curtains ripple.

The place had been ransacked.  Every piece of furniture had been torn apart while looking for hidden assets.  The contents of his desk and cupboards had been dumped on the floor and broken, scattering shards of glass about several rooms.  A large area in the study had been charred black, stopping short of damaging the structure itself.

Sam stared at the carnage and quietly said, “We came here, after I turned.  He was looking for Dean or someone to shake down for information and then murder.  They weren’t here.” His throat felt tight and his eyes began to water. “Thank God they weren’t here.”

He walked over to the fireplace mantel.  A little over two and a half years ago Lucifer had pulled the center tile from it in order to access the emergency stash.  That had been the place to check in order to hide messages for each other in a crisis—a picture, map, even a scrap of paper with a single word scrawled on it—but there hadn’t been anything there.  Years later Sam checked the hiding spot again and once more it was empty. Rationally he knew that they couldn’t have left him any breadcrumbs, yet it still stung to not have been left a lifeline—hell, even just a note saying… anything.

His fingertips touched the empty bookshelves around the fireplace before dragging along the wall to stop on the portion turned black by the fire.  The burnt wallpaper and wood crumbled slightly at his touch, dirtying his fingers. That felt apt. After taking a moment to compose himself, he used the filth to write an ‘S’ on a rag and placed it into the hole before covering the hiding spot with the tile.  

He turned his back to the fireplace and stared at the charred area for a long while before explaining, “We burned Bobby’s books.”

“Lucifer burned Bobby’s books,” Ruby corrected.  “You’d never do that.”

Sam nodded, but he didn’t have any idea how to respond.  He could remember when it had happened. It had been agonizing to watch that destruction befall his own home.  Countless years and decades of Bobby’s life’s work had been destroyed by his hands. Maybe he hadn’t been the one to make the decision to burn them, but his consent to Lucifer had surely meant something for his culpability.  It certainly felt like it.

He took a few more steps through the house that he hadn’t expected to ever see again, then sighed, “I miss him.”

“Bobby?”

“Both of them.”

“Well, let’s get our artifact and find one of them,” Ruby said as she started poking around the complete mess that the house had been left in.  More than half of the objects on the ground had been damaged or decayed beyond easy recognition. “We need something of Dean’s.”

“Just something he definitely touched, right?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed.

Sam didn’t even bother searching through the rubble.  He went straight for the kitchen. After a little banging and grunting, he returned to the study with the refrigerator door handle.  “Will this do?”

* * *

They didn’t stay in the ruins of Bobby’s home in case a patrol of either Lucifer’s or Michael’s swung by.  Not that Sam would’ve wanted to stay there any longer than necessary. The home was full of memories that had been tarnished by the last few years.  Even the fondest moments that he had spent there were now bittersweet in his mind.

Instead they hiked a quarter of a mile in the opposite direction of Sioux Falls before finding a single-story house that looked promising.  It was fairly isolated on a small ranch, with a metal fence and a broken porch swing. Only a couple of the windows were shattered. The front door was locked, hinting that it might not have been looted yet.  Without the means to pick the lock, Sam resorted to kicking it in. The loud bang and snapping of wood startled Emma, causing her to cry.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Ruby told her.

After handing off their daughter, she cleared off a large enough section of living room floor so that they could both settle in with several maps laid out around them.  Sam sat down in front of her. He gently bounced Emma on his knee while he watched his partner work. Once the supplies were positioned correctly and prepared, Ruby lit a candle that had been placed between them.  She carefully sterilized her knife with the fire, then washed Sam’s left arm with some of their boiled water.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

They both knew that cuts were particularly dangerous without disinfectants or modern medical supplies.  She didn’t need anywhere near a cup of blood, but it would hardly be a pinprick. He held his arm over one of their small metal cups.  She pressed the blade’s tip into the vein and made a tiny slice. He hooked Emma with his other arm, pulling the infant back before she could grab at the source of the bright red liquid.  When enough blood had been collected, Ruby stitched the cut twice before wrapping it with a cloth bandage. She held his arm, applying pressure for several minutes until the bleeding slowed.

Even if he hadn’t lost that much blood, it was still enough in his weakened state that it made him a bit lightheaded.  While Ruby started preparing the locator spell Sam took Emma and leaned back against a wall. He absentmindedly bounced the infant and hummed a random tune while focusing on continuing to maintain pressure on his wound.  Emma reached out for the floor and wiggled slightly, trying to be put down.

“Sweetie, I don’t want you playing here,” he told her.  “The floor is too messy.”

“How many times has she eaten dirt?” Ruby asked without looking up from the small runes made of blood that she was painting around the border of their maps with a thin stick.

“I’m allowed to try to mitigate the damage.”

“Don’t worry, Emma.  I’m sure you’ll sneak a dead spider or two when we aren’t looking.”

He stared at Ruby, a bit too disturbed by the thought to be amused.  “Evil.”

She glanced up at him, blinked her eyes black, then grinned sinisterly.

The spell took about three hours to perform.  Partway through he had to prepare a meager dinner of overcooked day-old rabbit strips and some pinto beans that they had found a few days earlier.  As they ate they watched the bloody runes slowly creep across the maps in search of Dean’s location. Eventually the blood on all but one of the maps faded away while the crimson stain on the last map settled on a point in the woods of northern Minnesota near the Canadian border.

“Got him.”

* * *

Sam was lying on the living room floor as Ruby rode him.  Rather than starting the next leg of the journey right then, they had decided to stay the night in the ranch house and even celebrate a bit.  He had a hard time grabbing her hips because of her round belly, so his right hand reached up and cupped her cheek.

She bit her lip as she came.  Feeling her—giving her that moment of bliss—it was incredible.  She was his sanctuary in their fucked-up world. He wanted to have a little cabin with her and their kids.  To live in peace. Maybe someday, if they were lucky enough to sustain it, have even more children.

Sam was losing himself to the moment when he moaned, “God, I love you.”

She clenched around him as he finished.  They both were heady from the release and much-needed rush of endorphins.  Ruby’s brow rose slightly when she replayed his words in her head. She looked down at him, though she didn’t say anything immediately.

“I’m sorry,” he hastily told her.  “It just slipped out. You don’t have to say it back or anything.”

Ruby leaned forward, but her belly collided with his stomach and she sighed.  “I would kiss you, but  _ someone _ is in the way.”

“Mama,” Emma said.

They both turned to see the nine-month-old sitting up in her bassinet, staring at them.  Neither of them had noticed her wake up from her nap. Sam could feel himself turn red. He looked around for a blanket to cover themselves with, but they were lying on top of it.

He quickly told Ruby, “Climb off of me towards her so that she doesn’t see my dick.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time, but he didn’t like the idea of Emma seeing his still semi-hard penis sliding out of her mom.  He had no idea how observant an infant nephilim-cambion hybrid was or how long their memories lasted, but he didn’t want her first fully-formed sentence to be asking about sex.

“Sam, have you seen your dick?  It’s a little hard to hide.”

The corner of his mouth curled up at the compliment.  He nodded at the fact that she was still on top of him.  “You’re doing a pretty good job of it.”

She shifted on him playfully, making him purse his lips.  His dick twitched and for a moment he considered trying to stay in her with the hopes of getting another round.  But despite them both being mostly clothed he was fairly determined not to have sex in front of their daughter. 

He looked over at Emma and begged, “Please just lie back down and go to sleep, so Mama and I can keep playing.”

She furrowed her little brow, then awkwardly started climbing out of the backpack bassinet toward them.

“Abort,” Sam said as he rolled his hips to help force Ruby off of him while he tried to cover his dick with the blanket.

Ruby’s leg caught on his hip, forcing her to pivot in order to avoid kneeing him in the balls.  She managed to settle in a sitting position on the floor next to him. Her hand touched her belly at what was probably movement.  “Warn me next time.”

Sam opened his mouth to apologize, but immediately became distracted by Emma crawling across the floor toward him.  He hastily grabbed one of the rags they kept on hand for assorted infant-related messes, used it to wipe up the cum that had spilled all over his lap, then pulled up his pants.  His still-partially-hard dick had barely been stuffed into his jeans before he had to redirect Emma away from the newly-stained blanket.

“What I wouldn’t give for an actual crib,” he groaned.

“Yeah,” Ruby agreed.  “It’d be nice to actually be able to go more than ten feet from Emma without her getting into trouble.”

While she was talking, their daughter grabbed onto Sam’s raised hand.  Emma wobbled slightly, but managed to pull herself up into a standing position.  It was the first time she had stood up on her own. She giggled, possibly with delight at her new accomplishment, while her parents stared in shock.

“Oh god,” Sam muttered.  “She’s evolving.”


	16. Late Fall: Salt in the Wound

They began their trek to find Dean’s camp the next morning.  By their estimation, the journey was going to take about two to three weeks.  It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but it still was an ordeal as winter loomed ahead of them.  As it started getting colder they had to change their focus away from attacks and instead primarily worry about the elements.  

Much to their disappointment, they agreed that Ruby’s belly was becoming too large for her to carry Emma.  That meant that Sam had to wear the baby carrier on his chest, and he wouldn’t be able to effectively use the bow and arrow while doing that.  He draped his wool poncho over both himself and Emma, then secured it with a loose belt.

Thankfully, they had made the decision to head north early enough that they were able to make some preparations.  Before they got too far from the area surrounding Sioux Falls they quickly searched a dozen attics and basements for supplies.  They had managed to find a real chest-mounted baby carrier, snowshoes and pants that mostly fit them. Unfortunately it seemed like almost every day Ruby had to make adjustments to her clothes to accommodate her ever-growing belly.  They had several improvised pieces of cold weather clothing, most of which would’ve been embarrassing but for their desperation. Sam had even taken to wearing two pairs of briefs-style underwear with a layer of wool socks between them to keep his balls from getting cold every time he sat down.

They had been worried that as they began adding more layers and warm accessories to Emma’s clothes that she might fuss and try to undo their work.  There were a few days when she had pulled off and thrown her hat repeatedly. After a little while she gave up on it, though they weren’t sure if her change of heart was because she had finally decided to listen to them or because she’d figured out that it was keeping her warm.

The chilly weather also brought a revival in Sam’s nightmares.  Lucifer had carried a cold sensation, creating the feeling that his organs were carved from ice.  They tried their best to stay warm during the nights, but the long-term exposure to the cold while they hiked during the day created an ambient amount of stress that seemed to manifest in his dreams.  On more than one occasion Ruby had woken him up by covering his mouth in order to muffle his frantic words. Sound traveled farther in the cold air. They couldn’t risk him screaming in his sleep.

About the only positive thing that could be said was that the snow meant they had plenty of fresh water available.  Unfortunately, the hunting became harder as the different animals began the hibernation process. More than a few jokes were made about being jealous of them, but there was a bit too much painful truth to it for those to last long.

Sam pulled the scarf down from around his mouth and nose in order to take a sip of water from his canteen.  The crisp air felt sharp as he inhaled. It would have woken him up a bit except for the fact that his body wasn’t nearly as startled since the cold was no longer a novelty.  At that point he was only ever really warm when he was huddled with Ruby and Emma under their improvised tent, wrapped in their blankets, in front of the glowing heat spell.

As they traveled farther north they had scavenged some more winter clothes from the occasional attic.  Just a couple days earlier Sam had managed to find a down jacket that was large enough to also wrap around Emma when she was in the chest-mounted carrier, allowing him to upgrade from the wool poncho.  Unfortunately Ruby was having even more trouble locating a jacket capable of accommodating her large belly. She tried layering and wrapping herself with blankets, but it wasn’t nearly as effective and the awkward setup slowed them down.

Ruby had sewn a pair of small wool mittens for Emma’s hand after she had started reaching up out of Sam’s jacket in order to play with his beard.  Thankfully she was merciful enough to not tug on his beard more than once every hour or so. He’d given up trying to stop her and instead started occasionally leaning forward to tickle her rosy face with it.  The giggles it produced warmed him just as well as any blanket.

They were hiking along a ridge of hills when Ruby stumbled on a few rocks that were hidden by several inches of snow.  She threw her hands out in an attempt to break her fall so that her belly wouldn’t hit the ground, but Sam caught her. He wrapped an arm around her for support.  She clung to him for a moment, trying to gather herself after the start.

“It’s okay,” Sam said.  “Let’s just rest for a few minutes.”

“We have to cover another two miles or we’re gonna be caught outside again tonight.”  Her teeth were nearly chattering from the cold. “If we can get over the next set of hills there should be some farms nearby.”

There wasn’t any guarantee that there would actually be shelter waiting for them.  They were fairly sure that they knew which hill line they were on, but they’d been wrong before.

“You’re pushing yourself too hard.”  He held her face and looked her in the eyes.  “Please, just a few minutes.”

“I slipped.  It happens—“

“I know you’re tough.  I know you’ll survive this—“  

He pursed his lips, having brought up the unpleasant fact that if things went catastrophically wrong in a way that didn’t involve angels she’d be the only one to survive it.  When it came right down to it he was glad that she wasn’t at risk of dying some mundane death, but the thought of her hypothetically having to endure watching him and Emma die and almost certainly losing the baby was its own sort of cruelty.

She knew as well as him that it was everyone aside from her who was in the penultimate danger.  That’s why she was pushing herself so hard to get to shelter. It was for them. But at the same time, she was a crucial piece of their family and she couldn’t disregard her own well-being.

“You can’t keep running yourself into the ground,” he said as he put his hand on her belly to help emphasize his plea.  “We need you to take care of yourself.”

He could see the reluctance in her face, but she nodded and allowed him to help her sit down at the base of a nearby tree.  They rested there for several minutes, sitting together, using each other for support. A light snowfall descended around them as they sat.  Sam reached over and took her gloved hand in his. He didn’t know if the impulse was inspired by the beauty of the scene or his growing concern over the weather.  She gently squeezed his hand back. 

When they couldn’t put it off anymore, they got up and resumed their trek.  After taking the break they made better time, but they were still a bit less than a mile from the houses when a couple dozen small white and brown birds suddenly took flight from a nearby tree while frantically chirping.  For a moment Sam thought about handing Emma off to Ruby so that he could ready his bow in case of predators, but the concern had barely registered before he realized what was happening.

He heard the sound of wings flapping, but these were much larger and closer.  It felt like his heart must’ve stopped. He wrapped his arm around Emma as he drew his angel blade and spun around to see how bad the attack was.  

It was only one angel:  Munkar. He’d finally caught up to them.  The angel was standing roughly five feet away.  He didn’t have his blade drawn, but there wasn’t any doubt in Sam’s mind that Munkar could summon it and counterattack before he could even close the distance.

“Do you know who I am?” the angel asked.

“Yes,” Sam replied.  

Munkar and his twin, Nakir, had been among Lucifer’s top lieutenants.  He had personally accompanied the archangel on dozens of missions; they’d slaughtered countless people side-by-side.  It was surreal to see that familiar yet haunting face, nearly a figment from a bad dream. Some unpleasant part of Sam’s mind thought that it was almost regrettable that they’d have to fight each other, though he suspected that the feeling wasn’t mutual.

The angel summoned his blade, but didn’t take a fighting stance.  Instead he used it to point at the blade that Sam was holding, then asked, “Do you know whose blade that is?”

Sam didn’t take his eyes off of him.  The weapon clearly hadn’t come from Munkar.  It had been grabbed by Ruby while she was fleeing, taken off of some temporarily uninhabited vessel that had been around her at the time of the divine banishment spell.  He searched Lucifer’s memories trying to recall which angels had been nearby at the time— Fuck. Angel blades were a very precious possession to their creators. Losing one to a demon and a vessel would’ve been a point of embarrassment, especially for someone in a command position.  He was there by himself to rectify the situation discreetly.

“It’s Nakir’s, isn’t it?” Sam guessed, knowing perfectly well that if it was anything other than such a private matter there would have been an entire team called in to collect them.

“Yes.”  Munkar took a single step forward.  “I’m here to take it back, then I’m going to bring the three of you back home.”

Sam had no idea what to do.  In his desperation he said, “I’m begging you.  Take me, but let Ruby and our daughter go.” 

Rationally, he knew that his plea had fallen on deaf ears.  The angel had no sympathy for him or his family. Any sense of camaraderie or loyalty was owed to the archangel who had possessed him, not Sam.  And even if by some miracle he could convince Munkar to show mercy to Ruby and the children, the moment that Lucifer took possession of Sam the act of disloyalty would be found out.

“No.”

When Munkar raised his blade at Sam, Ruby immediately took off her pack and pulled out her utility knife.  Rather than concern himself with whatever she was attempting, the angel gestured, telekinetically throwing Ruby backwards.  He stopped her from hitting the ground hard, but dropped her on her back on the snow-covered ground. Before she could get up, he pulled a tree down, pinning her legs.

Sam turned his body to try protecting Emma, then swung the angel blade at Munkar while he was focusing on Ruby.  Munkar handily dodged the strike, but didn’t jump straight into a counterattack. The angel stared at him for a moment, casually assessing him.  It was the first time he was seeing what Lucifer’s vessel was actually made of.

“It’s strange,” Munkar told him while parrying another strike.  “I had assumed that an archvessel would be more impressive.”

Sam barely dodged a hit, then lunged to take advantage of the angel’s overextended posture.  He landed a strike, but Munkar moved at the last moment, turning a potentially lethal blow into a long, bloody gash across his chest.  Before he could pull back to attempt another attack, the angel swung his blade up, slicing deeply across the inside of Sam’s right wrist.

He hissed in pain as the tendons were severed and the weapon fell from his hand.  Munkar quickly reached out and gripped Sam’s profusely bleeding wrist, causing so much pain that his knees buckled.  His offhand that had been shielding Emma reached down trying to find the dropped blade in the now-red snow.

Munkar waved his hand, making his blade disappear before telekinetically snatching his sister’s blade from the snow.  

Sam protectively held Emma to his chest as she started crying.  He was trying to summon his own powers to fend off the angel, but the blood loss was making it hard to focus.  He must’ve looked like he was about to pass out because Munkar appeared completely unconcerned.

The angel squeezed Sam’s injury, spilling more blood down his arm, then said, “Don’t worry.  You won’t die.” He healed Sam’s wrist but didn’t bother undoing the blood loss. “Our Lord would prefer that you be returned in fine condition.”  Munkar flipped Nakir’s angel blade so that he was no longer pointing it at Sam, then held out two fingers to touch his prisoner’s forehead.

“Hey, asshole!”

Munkar turned around to see that Ruby was standing right behind him.  His blade hesitated, unwilling to accidentally hurt her or the unborn vessel.  In a swift motion she threw her left hand, palm open, at the angel’s forehead. As fast as the movement was Sam recognized the bloody rune carved on her palm.  It was the potiregere that Anna had used to send angels back to Heaven. Sam turned his body away from Munkar, shielding Emma behind him in an attempt to protect her to whatever extent possible from its effects.

There was a brilliant flash of white light.  Sam checked on Emma, who was still crying, but appeared to be unharmed.  When he looked back in front of him, Munkar was gone, but he hardly had time to feel hopeful.

Ruby wobbled, then started to collapse.  He hurried forward and barely managed to break her fall.  Once she was on the ground he was able to get a good look at her.  Her skin was pale, but not just from the spell. Not only was her hand bloody, but from the knees down it looked as though she’d been mauled.  Her pants were torn and quickly turning red.

“Turns out tree bark is rougher than it looks,” she muttered weakly.

She’d dragged herself out from under the tree.  Her demonic strength had made the task possible, but in the process the extreme weight and ragged texture of the bark had badly cut her.

Sam dropped his pack and started hastily digging through it trying to find the cleanest rags they had along with the first aid kit.  He handed her one of the rags for her to apply pressure to her palm, then regretfully gave her Emma. In a perfect world, he wouldn’t have had to unload the crying infant on Ruby while she was in such bad shape, but he needed to be able to focus on stopping the bleeding.

He carefully rolled up her ripped pant legs, then slid off her shoes and socks.  The skin on her shins and the tops of her feet had been raked to the point where he could see muscle in spots.  For a moment the sight of so much of her blood shook him, making his pulse rise from fear and something more. The faint scent on the cold air triggered memories of his addiction—but there was no temptation.  His mind was racing trying to figure out how to help her. There wasn’t even time to feel shame. He placed rags onto the shallower stretches of the wounds, then rested his pack on top of them to apply pressure.  For the deeper wounds, he was struggling to figure out how to stem the bleeding. It would take a while for him to start a fire in order to cauterize them— He felt sick at a sudden thought.

“I’ve got an idea to stop the bleeding, but it’s gonna hurt,” he told her.  After digging through an inner pocket of his pack he pulled out the small baggie of salt.

“Oh, Jesus fuck.”  She leaned her head back and groaned.  “Fine. Just make it quick.”

Sam opened the bag, then held it above the wound on her right leg.  He hesitated for a moment. As much as he didn’t want to hurt her, they couldn’t risk her bleeding so much that she was incapacitated or that it might hurt the baby.  His body was shaking from his own fight, the cold winter air, and the thought of what he was about to do. Emma was inconsolable, wrapped in Ruby’s only good arm. When he made eye contact with Ruby she nodded at him.

He started to sprinkle the salt onto the wounds on her right leg.  Smoke began rising from the gouges as the salt burned her flesh. She gritted her teeth and choked on her scream.  Her leg jerked, but he grabbed it with his offhand to hold her still so that he could finish the job. She was trembling violently.  Sensing her mom’s distress, Emma cried even louder. 

When the worst of it was done being chemically cauterized he moved to be on the other side of her so that he could work on the other leg.  He tried to hold down her other ankle, but his hands were shaking and weak.

“Do it,” she groaned.

Sam gripped her left leg and poured the remaining salt into the bloody wounds.  The smell of the burning flesh made him feel faint, but he tried to focus on finishing the job.  After tending to the truly dire injuries, he cut one of their two blankets down to make a few bandages to wrap the lesser cuts.  

Once she was stable he took a moment to rub his face only to discover that he’d been crying.  He wiped away the tears, then asked her, “How long does it take for you to heal?”

She gingerly tried moving her feet to assess the damage, then guessed, “Maybe a day or two before I can walk.”

Sam took the smaller of their wool blankets and laid it out on the snow next to Ruby, then helped her crawl onto it.  He put Emma back in her carrier, then grabbed the blanket and started dragging her. His body was shaking from the effort as his muscles labored, fueled by adrenaline alone.

It took almost an hour for them to reach the first house.  He didn’t even bother checking to see what condition it was in or whether there was another option around.  When he got Ruby to the porch he tripped and fell onto the steps. He couldn’t even lift himself up he was so exhausted.  Ruby pushed herself up the stairs using her one good hand and her left elbow. She dragged herself over to him.

“Come on, Sam.”  She touched his face.  “We just need to get through the door, then I’ll get us warm.  We can rest, I promise. Just a little bit more.”

His numb arms slowly pushed himself up.  He tried the door, but it was locked. After weakly pounding on it for a few seconds, he gave one last exhausted shove.  The door surrounding the lock splintered as it swung in. They feebly dragged themselves into the home and hardly even closed the door.  He wanted to try to help set up their equipment for the night, but he passed out before he could even take off his pack.

* * *

With Munkar being one of Lucifer’s most trusted siblings, they felt that it was highly unlikely that he would break and reveal their location while a prisoner of Heaven.  Knowing that, they decided to stay at the abandoned house for two nights, recovering as best they could. In that time, both of them had hardly left the warming radius of Ruby’s spellwork.  Luckily the cold weather had been helping them preserve their food—all they had to do was leave their excess meat out, exposed to the chill air, and it would be usable for several days—so Sam hadn’t needed to go out hunting.  When Ruby was able to walk again, they packed up and gingerly resumed their journey.

It was slow going.  The whole ordeal with Munkar had been emotionally and physically draining.  Ruby’s legs were technically functional, but Sam could see an occasional grimace of pain on her face when they were climbing or descending hills.  He tried to slow their pace a bit to help her, but when she caught him coddling her she’d insist that it wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought. Reluctantly, he let her push them on.  They were racing against the clock.

Eventually they reached the end of the farms and rural homes.  From there they only had to travel another eighty miles. Under better circumstances they could’ve covered that distance in only two long days, but, aside from Ruby’s injured state, they had several factors working against them.  According to their map, the terrain turned into dense forest, which was particularly slow to navigate when the irregular, root-covered floor was blanketed with snow. That was made worse by the days getting shorter, giving them fewer hours of visibility.  Then there was the discovery that, since Ruby could no longer easily carry Emma, she couldn’t breastfeed while hiking anymore; they had to stop for several breaks throughout the day. With all that, combined with the changing weather, they figured it would probably take them another week or more to cover those last eighty miles.

In many ways the impact of winter was just as bad as they’d anticipated.  In some ways it was worse. The constant cold, the long, dark nights, and the diminishing food supply was quickly draining their strength and morale.  They rarely spoke at all when they were walking. Whether it was a trick of his mind or not, Sam thought he could feel tiny bits of body heat escape his mouth whenever he was speaking.  It felt like the environment was literally sucking energy from his body—well, he supposed that that was exactly what was happening. 

Every morning it was complete agony to get out of their snug, little tent that was nearly warm.  But, as painful as it was, they both knew that they couldn’t afford to hold still while out in the wilderness like that.  They had to get to shelter, and being static in the elements would eventually lead to their deaths, and probably sooner than they would’ve expected.

When they were a bit over two-thirds through the eighty miles a snowstorm struck.  They were forced to stay in the same spot waiting for it to pass. The two of them had debated trying to press on despite it, but at the time they could hardly see five feet ahead of them.  There had been too high a chance of getting lost. They did their best to use their tarp and the ample supply of snow to make an insulated shelter, but it was cramped and chilly.

The storm finally broke on the second day, but they were running dangerously low on food and strength.  Ruby sat crosswise on Sam’s lap as he held their blankets around them to protect their body heat. Below the little tent, Emma nursed, though every couple minutes she let out a quiet huff.  He could feel the movement of Ruby’s arms as she gently pat their daughter’s back.

After a while she told him, “I don’t think I’m producing as much milk.”

He leaned forward and rested his forehead against her cheek, then sighed.  His hand slid along her upper arm, down to her elbow. He could feel that she’d lost some weight.  It wasn’t surprising. They were back to only having very small portions for meals, rationing the occasional raccoon or beaver to last the few days necessary to hold them over until their next catch.  But the snowstorm had prevented him from replenishing their supply. That morning they’d finished off the last of their food reserves. He had been planning on going hunting once the snow had stopped completely, but it seemed that that might’ve been too long.

“I’ll find some more food.”  He peeked down at Emma, gently pet her hair, then turned back to Ruby.  “Just stay here and rest.”

Scanning the perimeter, Sam saw only a snowy forest and a profound stillness surrounding them.  With it all looking the same it wouldn’t be hard to get lost. And with it being the early to mid-afternoon already, there wouldn’t be much visibility at all in a couple hours.

She looked at him with visible concern.  “You shouldn’t go out there alone.”

“It’s fine.  I won’t go far and I’ll be back before dark.”

Sam got up as carefully as possible to prevent the warmth from escaping the blanket tent, then crawled out of their improvised shelter.  His muscles and joints ached against the cold air, but it was too important for him to get out there. He grabbed his bow and quiver, then headed out into the forest looking for something for them to eat.  His footsteps were intentionally heavy, breaking a path through the shin-deep snow in order to guide him back. If it started snowing heavier again he’d have to turn back immediately or risk getting lost out there.

After roughly a half hour of searching, he saw two weasels gnawing on the decaying remains of what looked like a rabbit.  Rather than immediately shooting at one of the weasels, he tried to find some good positioning, readied his shot, and waited.  His arm started aching, but he tried to be patient. Just before his stamina gave out, the second weasel repositioned itself so that it was directly behind the first.  He let loose the arrow, piercing both critters, then let out a sigh of relief. The rabbit was likely too decayed to risk eating and there was barely anything left of it, so he picked up the weasels and went off to find Ruby and Emma.

Sam cleaned the two dead weasels, then started cooking one of them over their tiny fire.  Rather than eating the second one, he left it out to chill overnight. The cold would preserve it for a while and Ruby could defend it overnight should some opportunistic animal come along to take it—hell, maybe they’d catch some larger prey.  They could share it tomorrow morning, giving them both a little fuel to at least start the next day, when they would continue their journey. From there he would try to catch something else and on they would go, scraping by until they reached the camp—hopefully.

After cooking the weasel, he went back to sitting with Ruby on his lap, wrapped in the blanket.  He leaned his head back against the side of a large tree that made up one wall of their shelter, then watched her eat for a minute or so before his eyelids grew heavy. 

 

_ Lucifer was standing in the shin-deep snow before him.  His white suit blended with the monochromatic hues of the forest.  He seemed to tower over Sam, who was seated on the forest floor. The improvised shelter, Ruby, and Emma were gone.  He must’ve nodded off while Ruby was eating. Sam knew why the archangel was there, visiting his dreams.  _

_ “Go away.”  He was far beyond having patience for that sort of interaction. _

_ “You’re dying,” Lucifer told him in a quiet voice that pretended to care.  “The children are suffering. Tell me where you are and you can be rescued in minutes.  The children will be warm and fed.” _

_ Sam shook his head.  “We can still make it.” _

_ Lucifer raised an eyebrow at the unintentionally telling statement.  “Are you going somewhere?” _

_ “Through winter,” Sam added to try throwing him off the lead that he had potentially let slip. _

_ The archangel studied him for a moment, trying to discern how honest he was being.  He looked around at the snowy scene before commenting, “You’ll die out there and then you’ll be mine.” _

_ Sam wasn’t sure why Lucifer would be trying to convince him to turn himself in if he really was on the verge of getting exactly what he wanted.  The play seemed almost desperate. Maybe the conflict with Heaven was creating some concern over what might happen to his soul. Or maybe Lucifer’s angels were growing weaker by the day and needed their inspirational leader restored as quickly as possible.  Both scenarios seemed like wishful thinking, but neither was entirely out of the realm of possibility. Regardless, his answer was the same. _

_ He smiled weakly at the archangel and replied, “Then tell your people I’ll see them soon.” _

 

Sam woke up and straightened slightly.  Ruby was just finishing eating, so he couldn’t have nodded off for too long.  Lucifer’s comment about the children being in danger had left him shaken. He gently ran his fingers through Emma’s hair as she nursed, then placed his hand on Ruby’s belly and waited to feel movement.  

For all his random knowledge, he didn’t know how many calories it took to produce milk for an infant or to nurture a fetus towards the end of its last trimester.  Even ignoring those points on the curve, he still had no idea how much nutrition Ruby was getting—just that she was getting more than him. Of all the things he didn’t know, the one that was probably most alarming was that when push came to shove what would run out first:  the milk for Emma or the nutrition for the baby—or maybe both kids would start starving at the same time. 

He closed his eyes, trying desperately to sense any signs of life.  It was true that they hadn’t wanted the second kid, but they’d grown to accept it and selfishly looked forward to it.  To lose it so far along felt cruel. 

“It was moving a little about an hour or two ago,” Ruby said, knowing perfectly well what he was so worried about.

“If we don’t have another storm, we might be able to reach their camp in two days,” he guessed.  “You should take most of the food until we get there.”

She stared at him.  He could guess what she was seeing.  His face was gaunt below his dark brown beard.  Surely fatigue had created bags under his eyes and his lips were chapped from the cold, dry air.  They hadn’t had sex in about three weeks, but even back then she’d noted that his ribs were visible.  He’d undoubtedly lost even more weight since then.

“You look awful,” she told him.  “You need to eat too.”

“I’m not feeding the kids,” he muttered.

“You are when you’re hunting.”

“You know what I mean.”

They both looked out at the grey, overcast sky.  There was no way of knowing if the weather was about to improve or get worse.  Another storm would be enough to immobilize them while they were already vulnerable and that could easily prove lethal.

“He spoke to me again,” Sam said in a particularly quiet voice.  “He said the kids would be taken can of. If it comes to it… I-I could take Emma back.”  He didn’t need to explicitly suggest taking her back to Lucifer. He didn’t even want to be thinking it.  “She’d get food and shelter.”

As much as he was concerned about the second child, he didn’t want to suggest that Ruby turn herself in.  Maybe he could give her enough food to reach the camp—but then she’d have to face Dean alone. And if she somehow made it through that, she still wouldn’t be free from danger.  Returning to Lucifer meant that Sam would eventually be repossessed and then the archangel would know the location of Dean’s camp and Ruby. It was a futile plan—-or at least the part that involved Ruby’s escape.

She rested her forehead against his shoulder.  “You can’t go back to him.”

He wrapped his arms around her and Emma.  “If you take her back he’ll....” Sam didn’t want to think about what torture would be inflicted on Ruby after the baby was born, while Lucifer was waiting for his vessel.  Her well-being was only important to the archangel if it gave him more children.

She shook her head.  “You know he won’t kill me.”

“He’ll just do everything short of it.  How am I supposed to live with that, with what he’d do?”  His throat felt a bit tight, so he looked around at the quiet forest.  “What am I supposed to do without you two?”

Regardless of whatever survival skills he’d acquired, he couldn’t imagine living without them.  At that point it’d just be a horrible Sisyphean task, some endless fight to live with nothing to live for but denying Lucifer a vessel.  It hadn’t occurred to him that finding something that brought him joy would position him to suffer even more from the potential loss. If Lucifer managed to hold Ruby and their kids, he might very well find himself ready to deal after a few weeks alone in his despair.  

A few tears started trickling down his cheeks.  She reached up and wiped them away. “It’s okay.  We won’t give up,” she assured him.

“Am I being selfish?”

“Everything you do is for Emma, for the kids.”  She grabbed his cheeks with both hands, wiping away his tears, and faced him.  “You know Lucifer better than anyone. Should they go to him?”

“No.”

“Then stop beating yourself up.”  She kissed him, letting her lips linger on his for a beat, then whispered.  “Save that strength. We’ve got a lot of fight left to go.”

* * *

Two days later they were staggering through the woods when they saw the camp about three hundred yards off.  It was a collection of log cabins nestled deep in the woods. There was a barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence that wrapped the parameter.  The fence appeared to be coated in some sort of substance that was likely toxic or magical in nature. There were guards armed with semi-automatic weapons patrolling inside.

Sam pulled Ruby into a hug, then whispered, “It’s gonna be okay.  We’ll make it be okay.”

She touched his chin, drawing him down to a tender kiss.

Sam handed Emma to Ruby and took off his backpack of supplies.  After putting thirty feet of distance between them, he raised his hands above his head, then walked towards the camp gate.  As soon as there was shouting, he knelt down on the snow-covered ground and placed his hands behind his head.

“It’s fucking Lucifer!” yelled one of the guards.

“I’m not him!” Sam called out.  “I'm not possessed!”

“Don’t shoot!” Ruby shouted as she ran forward.  “Don’t shoot!”

“Stay back,” Sam told her, desperate for her to stay out of harm’s way.

Emma started crying at the sound of the yelling.  Sam wanted to turn to check on her, but he fought against the urge to make any sudden movements.

“There’s a kid!” one of the guards shouted.  “Don’t fire!”

A group of guards armed with semi-automatic weapons ran to surround him.  Two guards pulled Ruby back, away from the commotion. One of the guards kicked him from behind, knocking him to the ground.  He turned his face and tried to use his elbows to break his fall, but his right cheekbone connected with a rock below the snow’s surface.  As much as he wanted to react, he just tried to hold still as they handcuffed him.

When the guards lifted him into a kneeling position he saw that two of them were putting a set of warded handcuffs on Ruby.  One of the guards moved to take Emma from the baby carrier, but Ruby positioned her arms to block him.

“Don’t you fucking touch her,” she hissed at the guard.

Thankfully, Emma was crying enough that her eyes were essentially closed and it provided plenty of justification for Ruby to hold her close.  The guards didn’t attempt to try taking Emma again, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t created a problem. Ruby struggled to hug the crying infant while her wrists were bound.

“She can’t take care of her daughter like that,” Sam told the guards.  He didn’t want to explicitly state that Emma was his daughter for fear that there’d be some sort of retaliation.  “She doesn’t need the handcu—”

A guard punched him hard in the face.  For a moment he thought he might collapse to the ground again, but he was caught and quickly marched through the gates into the camp.  He was a bit too dizzy to keep track of his surroundings, but he kept looking back over his shoulder to make sure Ruby was with him. 

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she told Emma, trying to calm her while being escorted along behind Sam.

They reached an improvised prison with three barred cells each containing only a sleeping mat, a wool blanket, and a metal bowl.  Sam was shoved into the middle cell. He stumbled from exhaustion, landing on the cold concrete floor. When he looked up he saw that Ruby was being forced into the cell next to his.  He wanted to argue, to convince the guards to put them in the same cell, but he didn’t want to press his very limited luck so early. Based on her concerned expression and silence, he suspected that Ruby was on the same page as him. 

They would have to wait.  At first Sam was surprised that Dean hadn’t come to see them right away.  His first thought had been that his brother would want to see that it was really him, that he was really free.  But Dean was no longer his brother above all else. He was a leader, who needed to come up with a plan and be composed enough to follow through.  There wouldn’t be some hug between long lost brothers. It would be something very different.


	17. Early Winter: Reunion & Separation

It took about thirty minutes before Dean came to see them.  He was wearing heavy jeans, a military-style green jacket, and clunky, black combat boots.  On his right hip was a holstered angel blade and on the left was a holstered pistol. His skin was marked by several visible scars, including one that extended up his neck from his collar; someone had nearly slit his throat a while earlier.  He stared at both of them with a completely unreadable expression on his face. When he saw Sam his jaw clenched. 

Sam wasn’t sure what to say.  So much had happened between them—more accurately, so much had happened  _ since _ they had last seen each other.

“Ruby,” Dean muttered.  He rested his hand on the hilt of the holstered angel blade.  “I’d say I’m surprised to see you, but the way the last few years have gone, seeing you again feels about right.”

“Don’t hurt her,” Sam pleaded.  “She fought Lucifer. She’s on our side—“

“No.”  Dean pointed at him.  His voice had a sharp tension to it that barely contained his anger.  “You don’t get to say who’s on my side: not her, not you. You don’t know me or my side.”

Sam couldn’t really blame him for feeling that way.  Regardless of his motivations and their time spent not talking, him saying yes had been a betrayal.  There was no way around that. 

Dean stared at the little girl and Ruby’s large belly.  “Looks like you two are back at it.” He turned to face Sam, then added, “Let me guess.  You’re high on demon blood, too?”

“I’m clean.”

“Well, you still look like shit,” Dean commented.

He couldn’t really argue with that.  “We’ve been running out of food.”

Sam expected him to ask about the survival process, but the rebel leader didn’t.  His eyes had some disappointment to them, though Sam wasn’t sure if his brother was let down by him or circumstance.

Without bothering to inquire about the day-to-day struggles of their recent lives, Dean asked, “How long have you been free?”

“Eleven months.”

Dean looked at the little girl.  His expression of seething anger and disgust faded into candid shock and something bordering on fear.  He shifted slightly, putting two and two together before any of the guards. “She’s Lucifer’s kid.”

Sam raised his hands in an attempt to pacify Dean.  “She’s also mine.”

“He’s looking for her, isn’t he?”  When neither of them answered right away, Dean pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the girl.

“No!”  Sam threw himself into the cell bars, trying to position himself between Emma and the gun as best he could.  

Ruby turned her body to try to shield her daughter, then argued, “She’s a nephilim.  When she gets older she’ll be even more powerful than Lucifer.”

Dean’s face remained wary but for an eyebrow raising slightly.  “She’s a weapon?”

“Yes!” Sam said, desperate to find something that would make him put away the gun.  “Yes, against Lucifer. Please don’t hurt her.”

“How can some kid be more powerful than an archangel?”

“Half-angels are more powerful than full angels,” Sam explained.  “That’s why Heaven has hunted them in the past. That and with her being a cambion—“

“You mean the Antichrist 2.0?”

Sam didn’t acknowledge the connotations of the term.  “When she gets older and gets her powers she’ll be able to destroy Lucifer or the Heavenly Host.”

“And I’m guessing Lucifer wants to use her against Heaven.”  Dean sucked his teeth. “If she can kill the army of Heaven, then how quickly can he use her to finish off humanity?”

“We’ve got to protect her.”

“Keeping her endangers my people.”

“She’s your one shot at winning this war,” Ruby told him.  “You’re really gonna throw that away because her being around is gonna make someone who already wants to kill you want to kill you even more?  You really are—“

Without taking his eyes off of her, Dean holstered the pistol and pointedly drew his angel blade.  “Everything you’ve ever said to me was bullshit designed to fuck us over,” he snarled through gritted teeth.  “So you’re gonna shut the fuck up until I ask you for your opinion. I’m talking with my—Sam, not you.”

Sam was painfully aware that Dean had just intentionally avoided referring to him as ‘my brother.’  The rift between them really was significant, though at least they were able to speak.

“I’ve got responsibilities.  I’ve got people counting on me, looking to me to keep them safe and kill the Devil.”  Dean tilted his head to indicate Emma without breaking eye contact with his brother. “I think you can relate.  So tell me: how would you react if the roles were swapped?”

If Dean had been possessed by Michael and inflicted carnage on the world, only to show up at one of their camps that summer, Sam wasn’t sure he’d be willing to take him in.  He suspected that there was more, justifiable animosity in the current scenario, but, honestly, there was another factor that Sam hadn’t even considered until the table had been flipped.  Beyond loyalties and culpability, what sorts of doubts must Dean have about his mental health? How much of a chance would he be willing to take with the lives of those relying on him?

Sam sighed with regret at his own conclusion.  “I wouldn’t trust you, not with my daughter”—Sam’s eyes briefly flicked over to Ruby—“not with my family.”

Dean nodded subtly while pursing his lips.  Through all the anger there was the faint glimmer of fresh hurt… but he didn’t look remotely surprised by Sam’s answer.  He started eyeing Ruby once more.

“Maybe you don’t trust me to act out of the goodness of my heart, but we’re begging.”  Sam watched the highly-lethal angel blade that his brother was holding. “I can help you keep your people safe,” he said in an attempt to derail any homicidal thoughts.

Dean turned his attention back to Sam, but he didn’t put away the blade.  “How’s that?”

“I have his memories and knowledge from before we split—it’s a little spotty, but some of it is actionable intel.  And my visions are back. Sometimes I can see his people,” Sam explained. “How do you think we evaded them this long?”

“Your visions are back, but you aren’t drinking blood,” Dean said skeptically.

“Lucifer switched them back on.  He was using them to help him fight his war.”

Dean stared at him for a long while.  The guy was brilliant when it came to hunting tactics.  There was no doubt in Sam’s mind that his brother was equally gifted when scaled up to military strategy.  He could see the pieces fitting together, conveying just how important Sam and his visions had been to Lucifer’s war effort.  “Does he have a vessel?”

Sam shook his head, then answered, “As of a week ago:  no. He’s burning through the lesser vessels too quickly.  They last maybe a couple hours tops, but they start breaking down within minutes.”

Dean continued to ominously hold the angel blade, fingers flexing on the grip.  He contemplated his prisoners for several seconds before saying, “And if I kill you and your kids, then he doesn’t stand a chance.”

Sam’s stomach dropped at the leap in reasoning.  The suggestion wasn’t far-fetched or even perverse to the sort of pragmatist in charge of a militia battling the fucking Devil.  But despite all that, thankfully it was still wrong. “It won’t stop him. He won’t have a body for a while, but it won’t stop him.  He’d eventually find my soul and bring me back. You’d be handing me over to him. If you don’t believe anything else, believe that I don’t want to go back, and that I’ve thought about this… extensively.”

Dean’s lips thinned almost imperceptibly as he processed the new information.  A few seconds passed where Sam thought he could almost see Dean’s eyes soften at his brother’s admission that he’d considered suicide.  Rather than venture into even more emotionally-charged territory, he asked Sam, “If he’s been burning through bodies for almost a year, how come we haven’t caught a break on casualties?”

Sam felt some small measure of relief at actually having an answer to the question.  “He can still command his subordinates and they’ve been making a hard offensive push in order to not look weak.  As of last winter he had twenty-eight lieutenants working directly under him—big names: Abaddon, Uriel, and Alastair are back—“

“Ruby’s back,” Dean hissed.  “I’m noticing a trend.”

“I didn’t work for him after he resurrected me,” Ruby said.

He pointed the angel blade at her, giving her one last warning to not speak.  When he saw that Ruby’s lips were sealed he lowered the weapon and nodded at Emma.  “All that  _ not-work _ got you more than a gold star.” 

Ruby glared at him, but didn’t risk talking back.

“She didn’t….“  Sam didn’t even know where to begin.  Ruby and he had hardly spoken to each other about it since the first night.  It had been too painful a subject for both of them. He hated to bring it up, to reopen that wound—though Dean had taken the fresh slice at her.  It was wrong to leave her undefended. “He raped her.”

“She tell you that?” Dean asked coolly.

Sam stared at his brother with an ashamed vulnerability and quietly explained, “I remember it.”

Dean’s jaw clenched subtly at the unexpected additional nuance to the entire situation.  He didn’t want it to be true. He wanted it to be some sort of trick or manipulation. Rather than risking the new information messing up his moral high ground, he settled on replying, “It doesn’t change anything.”

As crushing as the lack of sympathy was, Sam was grateful that his brother hadn’t accused Ruby of some sort of deception.

“She’s still Lucifer’s kid,” Dean continued.

“She’s my kid,” Sam corrected through gritted teeth.

“And yet you aren’t the one I’m worried about ripping the walls off the buildings trying to get to her.”

He wanted to reply that if Dean did anything to her that he’d do more than tear the camp down to its foundation, but he didn’t risk antagonizing the guy anymore.  His body was trembling from the cold, his exhaustion, and the adrenaline that was coursing through his system at the thought of something happening to his daughter.  He forced himself to not flex against his warded handcuffs in a display of his growing anger. Through his quiet rage and his fear, all he could manage to say was, “Don’t hurt her.”

Dean holstered the blade, then turned around to address one of the four guards.  “Go get Cas.”

The guard nodded before hurrying out the door.

The brothers silently watched each other while they waited.  Sam had no idea what Dean was getting at, but at least Castiel was a familiar face, possibly someone who could help moderate the elder Winchester’s emotionally-charged orders.

After a minute or two Castiel entered.  He was dressed in jeans, work boots, a pale blue linen shirt, and a heavy, dark grey winter coat.  He had a slight beard and a pleasant, almost intoxicated expression. When he saw their prisoners he paused for a second, startled by the discovery.  He looked at Sam with an oddly readable expression of concern and softness. His eyes widened as they settled on Emma.

“She’s a nephilim,” said Castiel.

“She’s Lucifer’s nephilim.”  Dean pointed to the infant. “You’re gonna take her for now.”

“Take her?” Sam, Castiel, and Ruby all asked at the same time, but Dean ignored his prisoners.

Instead Dean looked to Castiel and explained, “She’s half angel.  You’re our angel. Congratulations. She’s all yours.”

“You can’t take her,” Sam told them.

Dean raised an unamused eyebrow.  “Can’t?"

“She’s still nursing,” Ruby said while clutching her daughter.  “She needs to stay with us.”

Dean told Castiel, “We’ll see if Jo can pump extra.”

“A half-demon nephilim isn’t human,” Castiel pointed out.  “It might not be wise to feed her human milk. If she’s survived this long with Ruby nursing her—”

“See if she can tolerate normal milk,” Dean instructed.  “No matter what, Ruby’s handcuffs stay on and she stays in the cell.  This bitch doesn’t get an inch. Understood?”

Castiel nodded in acknowledgment of the order.  He didn’t look over to see either Sam or Ruby’s reaction to the unpleasant turn.  In fact, the way he avoided looking at them almost hinted at some level of shame or remorse.

One of the guards opened the door to Ruby’s cell.  Castiel walked in and knelt down in front of her. She scooted away from him despite knowing the futility of trying to keep her daughter.

Sam gripped the bars separating him from them.  He wanted to argue, fight, and beg to keep her, but he recognized the determination in Dean’s face.  Instead he nodded towards Ruby’s belly and asked, “Cas, can you check on the baby? See if it’s alright?”

“I’m sorry.”  Castiel sounded sincere in his regret.  “My powers aren’t what they used to be. I can’t do that anymore.”  

The angel reached out and started trying to pick up Emma, but she clung to Ruby’s jacket and started screaming.

“Please, Cas.  Just let me keep her,” Ruby begged.

“I’ll protect her,” Castiel said as the young nephilim lost her grip and he pulled her from her mom.

“Mama!” Emma sobbed as she frantically reached out for Ruby.

Ruby instinctively moved to get up and take her back, but one of the guards pointed an assault rifle at her.  The weapon wouldn’t be very effective against her, but if any other member of her family got caught in the crossfire it could prove lethal—and she had one potential casualty affixed to her torso.  She sat back down and told her infant daughter, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. He’s a friend.”

Castiel carried the eleven-month-old out of the cell.  She wriggled and screamed in his arms, but it was no use.  To his credit, the angel appeared disappointed to be a party to it.

“Dada!” Emma called out while grabbing for Sam.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” he said in as reassuring a voice as he could manage under the circumstances, but Castiel touched the infant’s forehead, knocking her unconscious.  “Cas, please….” He had no idea what to say. Sam wanted to rip the door off his cell and take Emma back, but with the warded cuffs on him all he could do was cry. He sat in a state of shock as Castiel turned and took his daughter away.

“Don’t look so surprised.  A prison cell isn’t the kind of place for a kid,” Dean commented.

Sam shook from his stupor and glanced at Ruby.  Tears were running down her cheeks, but her eyes were lit with pure rage.  Her arms were wrapped defensively around her belly. It wasn’t clear whether the last comment was Dean’s attempt at helping Emma or if it was a threat against the baby.

“Dean….”  He could barely speak he was so upset.

The elder Winchester glanced over at him, seemingly annoyed to be on a first-name basis with his brother. 

Sam swallowed his emotions and weakly said, “We need food.  Ruby needs food.”

“She’s a demon,” he replied coldly.

“For the baby.”

A guard entered the room and whispered something into Dean’s ear.  They quietly spoke to each other for several seconds, then Dean turned and started to leave.

“What about some food?” Sam pressed again before he was gone.

Dean didn’t bother looking back but responded, “Fine.”

* * *

Almost an hour later, two small bowls of stew were delivered to their cells.  The chunky slop was cold, but it was the most substantial meal that they’d had in weeks.  Sam had to pace himself so that he wouldn’t eat it so quickly that he became ill. 

When he was done eating, he placed the empty bowls outside their cells, then dragged his sleeping mat to be against the bars, beside Ruby’s mat.  He lay down on the mat and put his cuffed hands through the bars. It took some effort for Ruby to lie down while her wrists were bound, but she managed to lower herself without her belly colliding into the floor with much force.  Sam touched her belly, hoping to feel the baby move.

Two wet spots were forming on Ruby’s top where she was leaking milk.  She tried to position her arms to cover them up, but couldn’t manage it while bound.  

Sam took her hands in his, then said, “She’ll be fine.  She went with Cas because he knows the most about nephilim.”

“We know the most about her,” corrected Ruby.

“There are other kids on the base.  They’ll feed her and she’ll be warm.”  Sam could feel a gnawing ache in his chest at the fact that Emma was gone and they had no idea when or if they’d see her again.  “I miss her too, but at least she’s safe.”

“I know you got along with Cas back in the day, but he’s still some angel taking away our daughter.”

“He isn’t Lucifer,” Sam said, desperate to find anything that might comfort them.  “Dean’s upset, but she’s just a baby. They won’t hurt her.”

“They didn’t even ask for her name.”  Ruby paused for a moment and closed her eyes, probably fighting back a few tears.  “She isn’t a kid to them. She’s just something they can use in their war.”

He wasn’t sure if he was capable of arguing with that.  The fact of the matter was that he didn’t know Dean and Castiel well enough anymore to know what they might do or how they might feel about Emma.  Dean hadn’t reacted with the sort of surprise or positivity that most people experienced when finding out that they were an aunt or uncle. Granted, he’d actually been somewhere out of their view when he had been informed about Sam showing up with a pregnant woman and an infant.  His candid reaction was a mystery as much as whatever was happening out there now.

Sam tried to focus on triggering a vision in a desperate attempt to see where Emma was, but nothing happened.  He examined the anti-magic handcuffs for a moment. The engraving included an Enochian rune set designed to subdue angels.  They had to be high-quality restraints—and based on the dried blood still caked in the teeth of the locking mechanism, they’d seen some prior use.

Ruby touched her belly at some movement.  He awkwardly reached both hands through the bars to place them on her belly so that he could feel the baby move.  There was a little kick that made him smile sadly.

Her voice was exhausted as she softly said, “They’re gonna take this one away too.  This one isn’t even a weapon to them. They might just kill it.”

“It’s a cambion.  It’ll still be powerful.”

“Why bother keeping the younger, weaker weapon?” she asked.

He didn’t have a good answer, so instead he said, “We’ll find a way to protect them.”

* * *

Sam could faintly hear Emma screaming in the distance.  The sound was heartbreaking, but at the same time he was scared to have it stop.  It terrified him to think that maybe one of the guards might eliminate the threat by simply killing her.

For much of the night he lay awake on his sleeping mat, curled up on his side by the bars closest to Ruby.  She held his hands, but he didn’t meet her eyes. He was staring at nothing in particular, eyes unfocused, while struggling to process their new circumstances and how they’d gotten there.

On a long enough timeline and without the mitigation or excuses:  Ruby had betrayed everyone, leading him to betray Dean and the world.  He had quit the fight, then when he wanted back in Dean didn’t want to work with him.  The brothers each did their own attempt at fighting the Apocalypse. In the process, Sam had said yes to Lucifer, making it all that much worse.  Now Sam and Ruby were there asking for Dean’s help. Dean was angry, but he was providing them with at least the most meager accommodations while trying to figure out what to do.  In Dean’s mind, either as punishment or as some pragmatic step, it had been important to keep Emma away from them—or at least Ruby. Now they were waiting, relying on Dean to pass judgment.

To be perfectly honest, he had no idea what he expected his brother to do.  He would’ve liked to think that there was still room in Dean’s heart for forgiveness even if trust wasn’t on the table.  And yet the guy had been burnt before, repeatedly. Never mind the fact that this new, harsher world called for a certain hardening of the skin.  Sam had experienced it in a very different way; he’d become a paranoid scavenger fighting against the natural world as much or more than against the collapse of civilization.  Meanwhile, Dean had been himself the entire time and had rode the decline of humanity like a man holding onto the mast of a sinking ship.

But for all of Sam’s abstract sympathy for what his brother had endured over the last few years, there were too many other emotions swirling inside him.  He wanted to believe that Dean hadn’t taken Emma out of spite, but every time he heard her cry his compassion was drowned in anger. 

He barely slept, drifting in and out of consciousness, too exhausted to stay alert, yet every time Emma cried out in the distance he jolted awake.  The experience was completely disorienting. He was in a strange, new place; not the wilderness or an abandoned house. It was different and unpleasant—everything about the moment was wrong and jarring.

Beyond their weapons and wary expressions, the presence of the guards made him profoundly uneasy.  Aside from the stranger they’d met early in their journey, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been around people.  No. That wasn’t true. It was nearly three years earlier. Maybe he really had desocialized. For nearly a year other people in all forms had been a threat, and before that… it felt like another lifetime.  So much had changed, since then and also in the last few hours. They were on the cusp of a new future; he only hoped that, maybe somehow, his family would be together and safe in that future.


	18. Early Winter: The Second

The next morning Dean returned to the small prison.  His eyes were slightly bloodshot with subtle bags of fatigue under them.  He’d almost certainly been up most of the night—undoubtedly worrying about the mountain of troubles they’d just brought to his door, and hopefully with a side of guilt over how he’d reacted.  Surely he’d also heard Emma’s cries echoing throughout the camp on and off during the night. 

Sam suspected that it was probably wishful thinking that his brother had sufficiently slept on the matter when sleep had been so scarce.  He wanted to deal with the mostly-reasonable man he’d once known. Unfortunately, the situation was full of emotionally-charged issues. One fatigued mind was bad enough, but two could lead to some serious problems.

In the least threatening way possible Sam asked, “Can we have Emma back?”

“Ruby definitely doesn’t get her.  You….” Dean stopped short of explicitly denying him.  He probably couldn’t find a good enough justification beyond a generalized distrust and the desire to hurt Sam back.

Sam didn’t have to look at Ruby to know that she was seething in the cell next to him.  He was grateful that she hadn’t started arguing with Dean as soon as he had said that she wouldn’t be given their daughter.  Things were too delicate for them to risk getting into a fight with so little leverage. He was sympathetic to her anger, but they needed to try defusing the situation as much as possible.  So he didn’t even risk glancing at her. Sam’s eyes were locked with Dean’s in an attempt to keep Ruby and any animosity towards her out of the conversation.

“We can keep her quiet and it won’t be any trouble,” Sam said, trying to appeal to pragmatism.

“She isn’t staying in the cell.”

Sam considered suggesting that he be allowed out of his cell so that he could care for Emma, but he hesitated.  The thought of being separated from Ruby scared the hell out of him. If she was left alone there might be a higher risk of her being mistreated or killed.  She was pregnant, but, as she’d pointed out the night before, the second kid didn’t necessarily mean anything to their captors. He hated the idea of choosing between risking Ruby and the second child’s life and putting Emma through the ordeal of being kept from them.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Sam said weakly.  “Is there any way for me to see her? Are you trying to make me choose?  Just be straight with me. What can I do to protect my family? Because I’ll do it.  Just please give me a hint.”

Dean’s jaw clenched at the description of Ruby and their kids as Sam’s family.  As true as it may have been, the characterization had probably been a little painful for the man who had previously been Sam’s family.

“I don’t know,” Dean admitted.  There was a hard edge to his voice.  Confessing that he didn’t have the answer had probably taken an uncomfortable level of honesty.  He was the leader of a group of soldiers; maintaining an air of certainty was part of keeping the gears turning.  But as quickly as the moment of vulnerability had come it disappeared as he steeled himself. “I’m not taking chances with the lives of my people.  They’ve been through hell. I’m not letting you two out to go fuck them up or mess up our work—”

“I could help you,” Sam suggested.

“Well, you aren’t going to,” Dean replied.  “You look like the guy who’s been killing us left and right.  I’m not sending you out there. And you aren’t going anywhere near our intel.  I don’t trust you. As far as I’m concerned you’re just an inch away from being a traitor, so don’t think that you’re gonna just walk out of that cell and sit in on our mission briefings.”

“So you’re just gonna leave us in here—until what?”  Sam pressed, trying to get a concession. “You need to figure out what we can do to make things right between us.  This can’t last. You know you can’t just keep us in here indefinitely.”

Dean nearly rolled his eyes with some unappealing thought as he nodded to himself.  “You’re half right,” he replied with a quick glance at Ruby.

Sam’s blood turned a bit colder at the specificity of his brother’s words.  “No. Please—“

Dean crosses his arms in front of his chest.  “Give me one good reason not to cut Ruby loose.”

“She saved me.  She fought Lucifer.”  Sam desperately gestured at her.  “She’s pregnant.”

Dean exhaled a sharp, unamused laugh.  “With hellspawn.”

“It won’t be trouble.”

“You don’t know that.  The last half-demon mutt was the fucking Antichrist.”

“I’ll make sure it can control its powers,” Sam pleaded, then tried to frame the baby as a bargaining chip.  “It’s mine. Use it as a hostage to get me under your thumb. Just please don’t hurt them.”

Dean didn’t point out the fact that he was already holding one of Sam’s kids hostage.  Though maybe he really didn’t consider Emma to be Sam’s daughter.

“You want me as an asset,” Sam continued.  “With my visions back, I can give you current intel.  If you take my handcuffs off—”

“And what about your telekinesis?” Dean asked.  “What’s to stop you from breaking out of here without the cuffs?”

“I haven’t had any telekinesis since it happened,” Sam lied.

“Sorry if I don’t believe you,” Dean replied with no visible remorse.  He studied Sam thoughtfully for a long while, then rubbed his face. “Maybe I don’t want to keep you around.  Maybe it’d be simpler if I just threw you back out there. You ever think how much easier this would all be if you weren’t even a factor?”

“Every single day.”

They stared at each other, both aware that Sam had just flipped Dean’s expression of pain and anger into an admission of regret.  

“You aren’t gonna make a sympathy play on me,” Dean stated coolly.

“I’m not making any sort of play.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t regret what I did and wish that I could fix things.”

Dean clenched his jaw.  The conversation was getting to him.  Hopefully he was losing some of his perceived moral high ground.  He didn’t want to be the bad guy. At the very least the interaction was making him more uneasy, though he was getting emotional.

“Y-you were dead.”  The elder Winchester’s voice shook slightly.  “You were dead and I hated you. I hated you for getting yourself into that mess, but at least you were dead.”

A couple of tears welled up in Sam’s eyes as he shook his head.  “I was never dead. I was alive and awake for all of it.”

“You said yes.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Of course you had a choice!” Dean snapped.  “You fucking quit. You left us to fight this war without you.  Then you helped our enemy!”

“You’re right that I shouldn’t have quit, but I tried to go back to you and you turned me away.  I was alone.”

Dean’s cold expression faltered almost imperceptibly.  For the briefest moment he broke eye contact with Sam. He knew that he’d played some role in the Apocalypse.  Maybe it hadn’t been as large as his younger brother or Ruby, but there was a flicker of guilt. But as soon as his hard exterior had wavered, Dean hardened himself.

“You still had Bobby and Cas.  You still had resources,” Dean countered.  “Just because we couldn’t work together didn’t mean that you had to go off trying to single-handedly gamble with Armageddon.”

“I started this whole mess—I’m not denying that.  I started this whole mess and you drew a line in the sand between us.  How could everyone not take sides? How could you think that it wouldn’t tear me up inside:  the way you abandoned me, the way everyone treated me—“ Another tear escaped him. “How could you think that I wasn’t alone?  You left me to face this on my own and I tried—I fucking tried. He was going to kill everyone. I had a shot at stopping him. There was a trap set up, using the rings of the four horsemen to bind him.  We had a shot to stop it once and for all—“ 

“And all you had to do was say yes.  After that, it was just the simple matter of overpowering a fucking archangel,” Dean interrupted.  His frustration dwindled slightly as he thought about Sam’s sacrifice. “Maybe you thought you were doing the right thing—I’m so beyond it….”  He rubbed his face in exasperation. “You crossed the line when you went up against him one-on-one.”

“I had help.”

“You had a couple witches that you’d just met.  Not exactly the kind of help you should’ve counted on when the whole fucking world depended on it.”

Evidently Dean had kept tabs on him long enough to know who he’d worked with during their separation.  Either that or maybe his older brother had done some research when he’d said yes to Lucifer. As morbid a spectacle as it may have been, it sounded like Dean to dig that deep on his enemies.  The thought that they had been enemies made Sam’s stomach knot.

“They were good at what they did, and  at least they... they were there," he said defensive of his friends' memory. “ We tried—”

“And look how that turned out.  You shouldn’t have taken the shot—not when the risk was so high.  You didn’t stand a chance on your own against Lucifer. None of us did,” Dean muttered.

“I had to do something.”

“If I’d known what you were planning….”  Dean shook his head. He looked profoundly tired.  “You didn’t even warn us. Were you so caught up with your martyrdom that you didn’t want to risk us telling you it was a bad fucking idea?”

“It was our best chance.”

“Not when you’re out there on your own with a thousand pounds of emotional baggage.  That isn’t when you try to out-will a fucking zealous archangel. You don’t make stupid plays like that.”  Dean shook his head. “That’s just like you to go it alone. Hell, you’ve been out for almost a year and you didn’t come here until now.  You only showed up when you needed something from me.”

The corners of Sam’s mouth curled downward.  “Like you would’ve taken us in.”

“I don’t know what I would’ve done.”  Dean pursed his lips. “Eleven months ago….  How long was that after you helped him kill twenty of my people outside Cedar Rapids?  You might not remember. That was the one right after you murdered everyone in Montreal.”

“That wasn’t him, you fuckwit,” Ruby hissed, finally too offended to continue biting her tongue.

“You’d know.  Ruby with the inside scoop, as always,” Dean snarled.  “Who’s the better fuck? Lilith, Lucifer, or Sam?”

“Don’t you fucking pretend to know what I’ve been through.”

Sam could feel the conversation going off the rails.  His brother was agitated by all the feelings of betrayal and Ruby was happy to trade barbs, though in his anger he’d landed a vicious blow on her, having touched upon her trauma.  “Dean, leave her out of this.”

“Leave her out of this?!” he scoffed.  “She’s the one who started this whole thing.  Are you so fucking blind that you can’t see that she’s using you again?  She’s always had you wrapped around her finger. What, is her pussy that amazing?  It must be if you still fucked her after Lucifer was done with her. Unless that was one of the perks to being Lucifer’s bones?  You let him walk you through a few battles and in exchange you get a shot or two at Hell’s town wh—”

“Shut up!” Sam shouted, throwing up his hands as best he could while his wrists were bound.  

Both brothers were flush with anger.  Sam was trembling. Had he not been wearing handcuffs that blocked his powers he might’ve very well torn the gate off his cell or accidentally telekinetically attacked Dean.  The whole thing was emotionally raw for both of them and it had escalated too far. He slowly lowered his hands, placing his palms on the concrete floor. His chest heaved as he took a deep breath.  For his part, Dean took a half step back and rubbed his face in an attempt to regain his composure.

“This is me in a good mood.”  Dean’s voice wasn’t nearly as venomous.  He was warning them. “I’ve spent years losing people because of you two.  We’ve lost the whole fucking world because of you two. Then you show up on my doorstep with one-and-a-half kids and a whole world of trouble asking for my help.”  His mouth wavered slightly. “You’re asking too much.”

“We wouldn’t be asking if we didn’t need it.”

Dean nodded bitterly at the accuracy of the statement, then turned and walked out the door.

* * *

Two days later they were sitting in their cells waiting for word on Emma or what might happen to them.  The guards seemed to alternate positions so that half the time they were outside. It had seemed a bit odd for them to want to go out into the cold air so frequently until Sam realized that they probably didn’t want to spend their entire day staring at the face of Lucifer.  All things considered, he was grateful that for the most part they left him and Ruby alone… or at least until that evening.

Sam was sitting in the corner, leaning his head against the bars while watching a few tree branches gently rocking back and forth in the breeze when he heard Ruby hiss.  When he turned to look at her she was holding her belly and looked up at him with a pained expression, “I think that was a contraction.”

He must’ve turned white.  Terror washed over him. They were stuck in separate cells and there was no one else around.  He hastily got up, grabbed the bars closest to the building’s door, then shouted, “Guard! We need help!”

It felt like he was yelling for five minutes trying to get someone to come.  In his desperation he tried to force off the handcuffs, then when that failed he tried with all his might to use his telekinesis on the cell door, despite the anti-magic bindings.  He had focused so hard on breaking his cage that a warm trickle of blood dripped from his nose.

Eventually a pair of male guards entered, weapons drawn but thankfully not aimed at him or Ruby.  They saw the blood on Sam’s face, then quickly glanced around the room to see if there was some threat they were missing.

Since the guards were armed and confused, Sam slowly raised his hands before explaining, “Please, she’s going into labor.  We need help.”

The senior guard took a few steps to get a better look at Ruby, then said, “It doesn’t look like her water broke.”

While holding her belly, she snarled, “It doesn’t have to happen first thing, dipshit.”

“Please”—Sam tried to distract the guard before he decided to react to the insult—“Do you have a medic or midwife?  Is there someone who knows how to deal with this?”

The guard seemed perfectly happy to find someone else to take the responsibility and blame for anything that might go wrong.  He instructed his subordinate, “Watch them. If they try anything, shoot them. I’ll go talk to Mia.” Then he quickly left.

Sam tried not to make any sudden movements around the guard who had just been given the discretion to kill them.  He went back over to the bars between him and Ruby. She was lying on her side, clutching her belly, gritting her teeth through what might’ve been another contraction.

“Where’s Dean?” Sam asked the man with the gun.  When guard didn’t answer, he tried again. “What about Cas?”

The guard shifted his weight and glanced out the window, but didn’t reply.  

Before Sam could ask what the fuck was wrong with the guard, the superior returned and told them, “The midwife doesn’t want to go near her.”

Sam’s brain was sputtering trying to figure out what to do.  Aside from a doctor or midwife, Castiel was probably the most likely of them to know what to do.  The angel was thousands of years old, and unlike Lucifer, he’d actually spent most of that time with the ability to observe humans, potentially giving him experience that hadn’t been transferred to Sam from the archangel.  More than that, Castiel had seemed less hostile towards him and Ruby generally.

“Where’s Cas?” he asked again.  “Get him in here!”

“He’s in the field,” replied one of the guards.

Sam didn’t even have time to worry over the question of where Emma was if Castiel wasn’t around.  He had to believe that the angel would see to arranging care for her before going on a mission. Meanwhile, Ruby and the baby needed his attention.

“Let me into her cell,” Sam demanded as he grabbed the bars.  “Let me into her cell or I swear to God—” He stopped himself from threatening them in his panic.  “—If nobody else in this camp is going to do something, at least let me try.”

The senior guard took a step back and raised his assault rifle to be pointed at Sam.  He nodded to his subordinate, then said, “Let him into her cell. I’ll cover you.” Turning to Sam he added, “If you so much as take one step out of line I will put ten straight in your chest.”

Sam slowly placed his hands behind his head as the junior guard unlocked Ruby’s cell.  They weren’t going to take the risk of letting him out of his cage any longer than they had to.  Not that Ruby appeared to be much of a threat while she was handcuffed, on the ground, and in labor.

When his cell door was opened he cautiously walked out.  He didn’t make eye contact with the guards so that they wouldn’t feel like he was sizing them up.  He tried to move as clearly and deliberately as possible towards Ruby, telegraphing that she was his only priority.  As soon as he was in her cell the gate was closed and locked behind him.

He knelt down beside Ruby in order to check her up close.  Her skin was clammy and flushed. As she strained, her wrists pulled against her handcuffs, unable to move her arms to either side of her.  Even when she’d been a prisoner of Lucifer’s, they had taken her manacles off while she was in labor. That had been part of how she’d gotten away.

“Can we get her handcuffs off?” Sam asked the guards.

“No.  They’re staying on,” replied the senior guard.  “Orders.”

Sam opened his mouth to start arguing, but the guard gripped his assault rifle pointedly.  Instead he pulled his blanket and sleeping mat through the bars, then positioned them around her in the hopes of making her a little more comfortable.

“How long was it last time?” he asked while dabbing her forehead with the corner of a blanket.

“A little over two days.”

He felt a pang of guilt at having not been there for the labor and birth of Emma.  It barely mattered that he’d been trapped and only partially aware of the pregnancy.  Now not only was he there, but he was helping Ruby through it. They’d known as soon as they’d decided to keep the baby that he would likely be the only person who might help, but they hadn’t been expecting to do it while handcuffed and without their supplies.

About five hours later, after a particularly strong contraction, a significant amount of blood began flowing from Ruby.  His heart was pounding and he felt a bit lightheaded. He had no idea what complication that signified or how to deal with it.

“There was lots of blood before,” she told him weakly.  “I can live.”

Rationally, he knew that she would live, but he didn’t know what the blood loss meant or how it might affect the baby.  He gently placed his hand on her belly, unsure what could be done. For a moment he considered suggesting that they try to cut the baby out, but he wasn’t confident that he could do it without accidentally hurting the baby—never mind that the guards would probably refuse to give him a knife.  Emma had been okay; he just had to hope that this one would be too.

As the contractions became closer together, they also grew longer and more intense.  He tried to count out the time for the contractions, but it was hard to focus on counting while helplessly watching her.  By his best guess the contractions were roughly ninety seconds long and she was only having maybe forty-five seconds between them.  During the brief lulls her body became nearly limp with fatigue. He didn’t know much about labor, but his instincts and reason were screaming at him that it was coming to a head—surely the labor could only get so much more intense before it was time to push.

“Ruby, you’re gonna have to push at some point here.  If you have any idea when, then we’ll do that, but if you don’t know—“  He looked at her exhausted face. “You need to get this kid out before your meatsuit….”  He wasn’t sure if the strain could actually damage her meatsuit beyond functionality, but they didn’t want to risk it.

Ruby nodded, then reached up behind her head to grip onto the cell bars in preparation for another contraction.  “If it isn’t going head-first you need to tell me immediately.”

He positioned himself between her ankles.  There was barely enough time for him to process that it was really happening before she started pushing.  Ruby cried out as she pushed. He held his breath as there was more blood—then the head. It only took another strong push to get the rest of the baby out.

Sam caught the newborn.  It was another girl, but she was noticeably smaller than Emma had been.  For several terrifying seconds, the baby didn’t move. Her arms and legs dangled limply.  He held his fingers to her chest, trying to find a heartbeat. After a moment she wiggled weakly and started crying.

He carefully positioned the tiny newborn onto Ruby’s chest, then wrapped his bound arms around them, trying to protect her and the baby.  He started crying from exhaustion, fear, joy—from far too many emotions to process.

“It’s okay,” Ruby whispered to him.  “She’s okay.”

He nodded, then told the guards, “We need a blanket for the baby.”

After a few minutes, one of the guards returned with a small wool blanket, along with some towels and water to clean up the bloody mess.  It took a little finagling, but Sam eventually managed to wrap the newborn enough to keep her warm.

“Hello, Ada,” Sam whispered to his daughter.  “There’s our little fighter.”

* * *

Now that Ruby didn’t have a baby in her, the threat of her being killed was very real.  If Dean and his rebels were perfectly fine taking children away from their parents, then it’d be even harder to convince them to keep her around.  Ada could be given away, to be nursed by someone that was less despised than Ruby.

“I won’t let them hurt you,” Sam told her.  “If they try anything I’ll refuse to give them intel.  I’ll figure something out. I’ll-I’ll do something.”

“Do whatever you need to in order to keep the kids safe.”

“If it looks like they might hurt you….”  He could feel himself getting desperate, trying to think of ways to protect her.  He lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “Maybe my powers could get through these wards if I took a taste….”

Despite his past addiction, the blood that had spilled on the floor was about as un-enticing as it could be, though he couldn’t help but notice that the scent of her blood was making his pulse rise a bit.  He almost certainly wanted the mess cleaned more than anyone, though he’d only been partially successful thanks to his bound hands and limited supplies. If he was going to try giving himself a boost through drinking some of her blood he’d prefer to subtly take some from her wrist while pretending to kiss her hand.  It would certainly be less conspicuous than lapping the remaining unpleasantness from the floor like a dog.

He wasn’t sure whether he could defend them while wearing the handcuffs and he still didn’t have control over his telekinesis, but desperate times might call for desperate measures.  So far his telekinesis had been a purely instinctual reflex, which wasn’t ideal, but he would take it over absolute helplessness in a scenario where his family was being threatened. But she subtly shook her head at him, silently telling him that she didn’t want him to risk it.

He pursed his lips and their eyes were fixed on each other.  They both knew that escape was a long shot and even if they could somehow get out of their cell, they'd have to search a camp full of enemies for Emma, and assuming they could somehow get her and flee, where would they go?  They were still in the middle of nowhere during the heart of winter.

Despite the bleakness of their chances at escaping, he hated the idea of staying there.  His family had been separated with Emma’s removal. He didn’t doubt that they’d try to take away Ada too.  She wasn’t nearly as much of a weapon as her older sister, but she was a cambion and would likely be powerful in her own right.  More than that, taking away their second child felt like just the sort of power play that this crowd might do. Maybe on some level their captors thought they were acting with noble intentions?  That it was safer to remove the infants from the clutches of a demon and the former Devil?

Then there was Ruby.  He had no misconceptions about what they all thought of her.  Honestly, it felt like a miracle that she’d been allowed to live long enough to give birth.  She was in real danger and they didn’t have a way of protecting her. The whole thing was terrifying.  But she was subtly shaking her head at him, silently asking him not to take on the guards. She didn’t want him getting killed too.  

One of the guards approached them and looked at Sam.  “Okay, you’re going back to the other cell.”

He didn’t want to be placed in a different cell, unable to reach Ruby or Ada.  If there was a set of bars between him and his family it made it that much easier for the guards to kill them.  He wasn’t sure what leverage he had, but he’d try everything he could to prevent them from being split up.

“No.  I’m staying with them.”

The guard watched them for a moment, then went to talk with the second guard for a bit.  Every once in a while the guards looked over at them, trying to figure something out.

“If you don’t go back into the other cell we won’t bring you any more food,” the first guard threatened.

“I guess we’ll see how this goes.”

The guards both scowled at his attempt to call their bluff.  One of them left, leaving the other to watch their prisoners.  A few minutes later, three guards entered. If pressed it’d be four-to-one while he was exhausted and handcuffed, but it wasn’t like Sam had a choice.  He stood up, readying himself to try fighting them.

“Talk to Cas.  Get him over here,” Sam suggested as he raised his hands.  When they took another step closer, he yelled in an attempt at a prayer or simply hoping that he was back from his mission and in earshot.  “Castiel, we need you!”

The lead guard’s jaw clenched and he grabbed a metal baton from his belt.  His eyes watched Sam like a hawk, expecting some desperate attack. The other guards gripped their assault rifles, making it very clear that if Sam attempted a fight and got the better of the one with the baton that he’d likely be shot.

Sam took a step to stand more firmly between the guard and Ruby.  He visibly planted his feet in a display of his unwillingness to leave her.  As the cell gate was opened, he took a breath, readying himself for a beating.

The guard raised the baton and moved to hit him in the head.  Sam blocked the strike with his left forearm. The impact sent an intense pain down his arm, but thankfully the metal didn’t break the bone.  He grabbed the guard’s arm to prevent another attack, then tried to hold onto him as best he could. The tussling turned the guard into a human shield for him and Ruby, so one of the other guards put down his assault rifle and went in to help his friend.

The second guard punched him in the side before grabbing one of Sam’s arms and attempting to pull him off of the first guard.  The pair of them managed to slam Sam face-first into one of the sets of prison cell bars. Two hands held him steady while a fist struck him hard in the back.

“Get your hands off of him!”

Castiel was standing by the entrance.

Sam’s legs gave out under him when the guards released their grip on him.  His body was still exhausted from malnutrition and stress. He held onto the cell bars to help slow his fall, but also to give him something to hang onto should they start trying to drag him away.  

The lead guard told Castiel, “We let him into her cell to help with the labor, but now he’s refusing to go back.”

“Cas, please.  There’s no reason to keep us apart.”  Sam pleaded, “I’m begging you; let me stay in here.”

Castiel hesitated for a long while, then told the guards, “I’ll talk to Dean about this, but in the meantime, he can stay in there.”  The angel moved to leave but stopped for a moment to add, “Watch him closely. If he drinks her blood or tampers with his handcuffs, then you’re authorized to use whatever force you decide is necessary.  Otherwise, keep your weapons safetied.”

“Cas, how’s Emma?” Sam called after him.

Castiel stopped, then turned back to look at them.  “She’s sleeping.”

“Can we see her?”

Castiel thought for a moment, weighing the options.  “That’s not my decision.”

“You’re second-in-command, right?”

“Yes.   _ Second _ ,” Castiel replied.  “Dean has protected us for years.  I trust his judgment.” Without waiting for Sam to try another argument he walked out the door.

* * *

It was the first time since their escape from Lucifer that they spent the night in the same place for an entire week.  They were fed small but substantive meals at dawn and dusk. For the most part they weren’t harassed by the guards, though it had become routine for people to peek in one of the windows to gawk at the unusual prisoners.  They were provided with basic necessities like several wool blankets and cleaning supplies, but nothing in the way of creature comforts. 

To Sam’s surprise, the morning after Ada was born, one of the guards arrived for duty with an armful of newborn clothes and supplies.  He had used an incredible amount of caution to not put his hands inside the bars while pushing the pile towards Sam. It was explained that one of the mothers in camp had asked for the small care package to be delivered, but Sam gathered that everyone was, if not angry, then at least scared of them.

Ruby was starting to recover from giving birth.  Her meatsuit had been far too pale for the first three days, though it had remained largely functional.  While watching her breastfeed Ada on the first night it occurred to Sam how lucky they’d been. Had Ruby been human she might very well have died.  As it was they were similarly fortunate that the trauma to her body hadn’t caused it to stop producing milk completely. On the third day she was able to sit upright and by the fifth she could walk around the cell while holding their daughter.

Ada’s eyes weren’t solid black like her sister’s, though the irises were surprisingly dark brown, even more so than those of Ruby’s meatsuit.  She had inherited Sam’s excessive clumping of brown hair. Apart from the eyes, she looked a lot like her sister, though she was noticeably smaller.  Being so young, she spent nearly all of her time sleeping and nursing.

With their wrists bound, Sam and Ruby had a little trouble holding her.  Ruby mostly settling for letting the newborn lie on top of her chest for skin-to-skin contact and easy access for feeding.  

Each day Sam would ask the guards for an update on Emma.  Only one of the guards twice gave him the vague reassurance that she was ‘alright.’  He had to admit that it had probably been a good thing that she hadn’t witnessed the labor:  her dad’s panicked face, her mom’s cries of pain, all the blood. That being said, being away from her was agony.

They were concerned that the longer Emma was separated from them, the more traumatic the experience would be for her.  Up until a week earlier, Emma had only ever known her parents. Now she was seeing all sorts of new people and her parents were nowhere to be found.

It hadn’t occurred to him how terrifying it would be to have his daughter taken from him.  Beyond the ever-present concern that the rebels would decide she wasn’t worth the effort or danger, he just had trouble coping with her absence.  For the last eleven months or so she had been the main focus of his life. Everything that he and Ruby had done had been for her—and eventually for Ada too.

To suddenly have her gone... he didn’t know what to do with himself—and going through that sort of torture while being bound in a cell, not knowing what would be done with Ruby or their second child, it was torture unlike any he’d known.

He was barely sleeping at all, only to wake up trembling in a cold sweat.  The anxiety was triggering the lingering trauma that he had suffered over the last few years.

Ruby could see what was happening to him.  What must’ve been at least every hour she tried to reassure him or say something comforting, but he knew that she was also wearing thin.

They tried to direct their energy toward caring for Ada, but there was a strange cloud that hung over that dynamic.  The timing of losing one daughter so close to having another had seemed too much like a trade. It felt offensive. Ada wasn’t a consolation prize.  Their children weren’t fungible.

On the seventh day, Castiel entered the building carrying Emma.  When she saw her parents she started reaching for them and kicking her legs in an attempt to get to them.  Sam scrambled over to the bars and held his arms out to get closer to her even though some rational part of him knew that he wouldn’t be able to hug her with the cell between them.

“Please don’t make me regret this,” Castiel told Sam and Ruby before looking to the guards.  “Open their cell and take off their handcuffs.”

The guard opened the gate, then undid Sam’s handcuffs.  He wanted to immediately run the last few feet in order to grab Emma, but he was still scared to make any sudden movements while the armed guards were watching him.  He waited a moment until Castiel gestured for him to collect his oldest daughter. 

When he got her back, Emma clung to him.  He wrapped his arms around her and started crying with relief.  He kept whispering soft assurances, trying to soothe her and quell his own grief.

With her handcuffs removed, Ruby was able to hold the four-day-old Ada while getting into a standing position.  She hurried over to Emma. Sam pulled her into a group hug. Emma stared at Ada with a sweet curiosity, but before Sam could formally introduce the sisters Castiel interrupted the family moment.

“Our camp is relocating and we need you to come with us right now,” the angel explained.  “Please don’t fight us or run away. We can’t spare the resources trying to find you.”

“Are we prisoners?”

“I don’t want you to be prisoners,” Castiel told them.  “I need your help.”

“You have the fucking nerve to ask us for help?” Ruby’s voice was livid.

“You need our food and shelter if your daughters are going to survive.”  Castiel didn’t sugarcoat it. “We don’t have to ask for your help, but I am asking.  Once we relocate I’ll see to it that you get your own cabin. I’ll give you whatever I can, but we need to get moving now.”

The urgency of the request unnerved Sam.  He stared at the once-powerful angel, who was visibly desperate.  

Something must’ve happened for him and Ruby to go from being prisoners held in a cell without one of their children to being promised their own cabin.  

Sam’s voice wavered with concern as he asked, “Cas, what’s going on?”

“We think agents of Heaven might soon learn the location of this base.”  Castiel gestured for the guards to leave them. Once the area was cleared, Castiel continued.  “There were rumors of a group of Michael’s scouts searching for relics at the former home of a cultist roughly a hundred miles from here.  We thought that these relics might be a Bri’tav weapon.”

“I might be able to tell you about Bri’tav relics,” Sam suggested.  He’d need to learn a little more about them in order to better search Lucifer’s knowledge.

“That’s not the issue.”  Castiel pursed his lips. “Dean was on the mission, and he hasn’t checked in in a few days.”


	19. Winter: Extended Family

Castiel escorted them out of the building where they’d been held for what had felt like an eternity, despite Sam having been fairly certain that it had only been about a week.  When three armed soldiers approached, eager to help their superior manage Sam and Ruby, he told them to go help the rest of the camp get ready to move. It took a moment for nearly everyone – including Sam – to realize that he and Ruby were under significantly less guard than before.

Dozens of people hurried around, loading trucks with supplies.  It was Sam’s first chance to see most of the members of the rebel group.  There was a fairly even split of men and women, many of whom were armed with either guns or angel blades.  In general they seemed to be in their late twenties or thirties with only a couple older folks who had managed to survive whatever gauntlet had gotten them that far.  Three young children were ushered over to one of the SUVs that was parked near the rear of the camp. Each of the large cars were being fitted with an improvised snow plow.  For a second he thought he recognized Chuck hurrying between buildings with his arms full of equipment, but Sam didn’t want to rock the boat by trying to see if that really had been another familiar face.

Castiel guided them over to an SUV that was apart from the rest, then gestured for them to get inside.  Sam helped Ruby into the back row, then temporarily passed her Emma before climbing in himself. It was a slightly tight fit, but it didn’t really bother him.  The seats were padded, providing the most comfortable accommodations that they’d had in a couple weeks. It felt reinvigorating to not be sitting on the ground; it almost made him feel more like a person.

Once they were secured in the back of the SUV their resident angel left them.  They silently watched everyone hurry about the camp, getting ready to evacuate.  Even with the mistreatment that he and his family had suffered, Sam still felt like he should be helping somehow.  But when it came right down to it, him jumping out to lend a hand would probably only slow the process down. He didn’t know where anything was located or what their procedures were, not to mention if he did anything without an escort ten of the rebels would probably pull weapons on him.  Instead he sat there, anxiously bouncing Emma on his knee while waiting to either be transported out of there or for an army of angels to descend on the camp to kill them all.

“If Michael does have Dean, we’re dead,” Ruby muttered while gently rocking Ada.  “I’m surprised they aren’t just dropping us here and hauling ass.”

“They can’t afford to have the kids or me end up in either side’s hands.”

Whether or not it had occurred to the rebels, he had the ability to give Lucifer the gift of foresight, making him the ideal vessel.  Emma could eventually become a powerful asset to whichever side had her when she got older. And all three of them could contain Lucifer without being destroyed, though the archangel would undoubtedly prefer to not have to wait for Emma or Ada to mature.  All in all, Sam and his daughters were something the rebels needed to keep from falling into the wrong hands.

“That still means they could drop me.”

Sam glanced out the window to watch for threats.  “Maybe don’t remind them of that.”

A few seconds later Sam spotted Castiel returning with a blonde woman.  It was Jo. She was wearing old military surplus clothing and boots. Her left hand carried a small duffel bag and her right arm held a blonde baby that was probably between nine months and a year old.  

Jo was about to climb into the SUV, but when she saw that Sam and Ruby were inside she told Castiel, “I’m not riding with them.”

“This is the safest car we have,” the angel replied.  “We don’t have time to fight. It’s your choice.”

Jo chewed her lip in mild annoyance as she glanced around the quickly-dissolving camp, weighing her options.  With a visible sigh and a subtle roll of her eyes, she placed the duffel onto the floor of the car, then got in.  She took the seat in front of Ruby and behind the driver. Castiel sat next to her, in front of Sam.

After only a minute longer the last of the preparations had been made and they started driving.  Their car ended up being third in a caravan of what must’ve been at least fifteen vehicles. The whole thing reminded Sam of a funeral procession.

In order to break some of the tension he commented, “You had a kid.”

“Look who’s talking,” Jo countered.

Castiel turned around to look back at Sam, then explained, “This is Dean’s son.” 

Sam stared at the baby—his nephew.  The kid had blonde hair and green eyes.  With Dean and Jo as his parents, he expected the infant to be more animated, as some precursor to far-off bar brawls.  But the boy just looked around curiously.

“You two….”

“Are married,” Jo answered.  

Sam hadn’t ever expected his brother to be the kind of person who would get married, though he admittedly didn’t feel like he knew Dean all that well anymore.  He could imagine Dean and Jo becoming a thing, getting closer while enduring who-knew-what suffering. If he had to guess they probably had kept things informal, but after Jo got pregnant that might’ve changed.  Marriage seemed a bit old-fashioned for the hunter couple, though maybe that remnant of human civilization had carried enough sentimental comfort for them.

In an attempt to foster conversation Castiel added, “Connor is their first child.”

She shifted in her seat, then held her son away from Sam, Ruby, and their children.  He honestly didn’t blame her for being wary of his family. She’d undoubtedly heard all the horror stories and, as a hunter, witnessed plenty of tragedy associated with demons or Lucifer.  Honestly, he was a little surprised that she had been willing to ride in the same car as them. He supposed that she had already shown some compassion; she’d likely been the one who’d been feeding Emma for the last week.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck and told her, “Thank you for helping Emma.”

“I’m not gonna let some kid starve.”  Jo muttered, “No matter how freaky her eyes are.”

He decided not to respond to the comment about his daughter’s eyes.  The fact of the matter was that he and Ruby had gotten used to Emma’s appearance, but that didn’t mean anything to the camp full of humans who had only benefited by the diversity of one angel.  It was to be expected that others would be unnerved by her eyes. ‘Black eyes’ had been a slur for demons even back before he had said yes to Lucifer. It made sense that a camp full of hunters wouldn’t be warm to that particular physical feature.

While they drove, Connor and Emma stared at each other, apparently fascinated by seeing someone roughly the same age.  When Connor tried to reach out for her, Jo repositioned him so that he was facing forward. He wriggled, indignantly trying to turn around to see his cousin.  Sam held Emma back as she tried to get to Connor.

“At least someone is getting along,” Castiel commented dryly.

“We aren’t about to have a playdate,” replied Ruby.

“We can agree on that,” said Jo.

They drove in silence for several minutes.  Sam studied the woman who, for a few years, had been the closest thing he’d known to a sister—he supposed now she was his sister.  There was an old scar along her jawline and a small tear in her lower right earlobe. She’d definitely seen her share of combat. He wanted to ask about her mother, but didn’t dare.  In all the scrambling to evacuate he hadn’t seen Ellen. That didn’t bode well.

About a half hour into the ride, Sam saw Emma reach out for Ada.  She experimentally laid her palm on the newborn’s back, causing the tiny baby to huff and wiggle slightly.

“Careful, Emma,” he said in a gentle voice.  “Careful with your sister.”

“This is Ada,” Ruby told her.  “Can you say ‘Ada’?”

The nearly-one-year-old made a few sounds that were mostly a collection of vowels that might’ve contained a D.  It was a good first effort… or heartwarming coincidence. 

Sam kissed the top of Emma’s head, then assured her, “It’s okay.  You’ll get it.”

In his peripheral vision he could see Jo subtly looking over her shoulder to watch the wholesome interaction.  He wouldn’t have been surprised she was thrown by him and Ruby acting like parents. It was one thing to know that they’d had children; it was another to see someone nurturing a child.  

He thought about saying something to her, to address the elephant in the room and maybe even improve things between them, but the fact of the matter was that they were all exhausted.  He didn’t know if he had the emotional energy to go through that sort of conversation. Never mind that he didn’t have the mental energy to think of words capable of encompassing everything that had happened and changed between them over the last few years.

Emma let go of Ada, then extended her arms to hug her dad.  Sam embraced her and leaned back as best he could considering the cramped backseat.  Despite the tight fit, it was profoundly soothing, being with his family in a warm, soft place.  Even with the ambient level of fear, he still started succumbing to his fatigue. Snuggling with Emma, Ruby leaning against his side, he started nodding off.

* * *

Sam was woken up by a gentle tugging sensation on his chin.  He heard Ruby say, “Emma, don’t pull Dada’s beard.” 

He smiled slightly, then opened his eyes.  “It’s okay.” After the ordeal she’d been through over the last week he was prepared to let her get away with too much as long as he could see her happy.  Eventually, they’d get back to teaching her manners. In the meantime he hugged her a little tighter and kissed the top of her head. 

Now that he was no longer sleeping, Ruby leaned forward and asked, “So are we still prisoners or what?”

“Are you inclined to run away?” Castiel replied.

She tilted her head from side to side, conveying that she hadn’t yet settled on a course of action.  “That depends on what you’re planning on doing with us.”

“My priority is protecting these people.”  Castiel turned around to look them in the eyes while making his next point.  “I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to punish you over moral ambiguities and hurt feelings.  If you look to be a threat I’ll end you, but if you can help us, well, I’ll take whatever I can get.”

Sam exchanged a reserved sidelong glance with Ruby, then asked, “Why do you think it was Michael’s side that got him?”  

He didn’t want to point out that there were plenty of threats out there.  First of all, he didn’t want to brainstorm about all the ways that Dean could’ve been killed in front of Jo and her son.  Not to mention that stating that the world was dangerous would probably earn him a comment akin to ‘No fucking shit,’ and resentful glare.

“The first group of scouts we’d sent saw signs of angelic activity in the area, but no sulfur.  And there aren’t any signs of the infected for several hundred miles, especially during winter.”

“Some of Lucifer’s angels are patrolling without demon support,” Sam commented.  “They’ve been looking for us.”

“Those patrols, do you think one of them could kill eight hunters armed with angel blades?”

He considered the question for a moment before shaking his head.  “Not with Dean in the mix. Lucifer’s angels are spread thin and were searching for us more than anything.  It seemed like there were only a couple at most traveling together. Maybe if there was a runner, but with Dean there….”

“He’d be careful about runners,” Jo said, finishing Sam’s thought and agreeing with his assessment.

“Dean being captured by Heaven is our worst-case scenario,” Castiel told them.  “Until we have intelligence indicating otherwise we should be preparing for the worst.”

Sam sighed and stated what he felt was the obvious.  “If Michael has Dean it’ll only be a matter of time before he says yes.”

“He can hold out,” Jo countered.  “We just need to get him back.”

Sam glanced over to Ruby who gave him a knowing look.  Their captors—the rebels didn’t have their intimate understanding of archangels.  It was possible that Castiel knew just how dangerous his brothers were, but that didn’t mean that he or the others had realistic expectations.  Dean had been their leader, instilling a sense of confidence in their distraught, little community. It didn’t seem likely that they’d want to believe he could buckle under the pressure.

He didn’t want to immediately get into an argument only a couple hours after having his handcuffs removed.  Rather than insinuate that their fearless leader, friend, and husband would cave, Sam decided to talk about Michael as a threat more generally.

“What are our defenses against Michael’s side?” he asked.  “Evacuating like that—you have to be worried about one of your captured people getting head-warped.”

“We had warding around our camp—”  Castiel looked back at the two people who had managed to find them despite the precautions.  “Clearly not as much as we thought.”

“You weren’t counting on Sam cooperating and a halfway-competent witch,” Ruby replied.  When Castiel and Jo didn’t react, she added, “I’m guessing that you all only have one witch and everyone just blows off understanding the details like it’s fucking magic.”

“It is magic,” said the angel.

“You know what I mean.”

“We didn’t have many people who could cast,” Jo explained.  “Sam took the Banes twins—“

“There wasn’t any taking,” he countered defensively.  “They were getting shit for being half-witch. It’s not my fault—“

“Can we please not argue?” Castiel asked, then waited a beat to see if anyone was going to continue bickering.  “After Bobby’s death, we ran low on spellcasters. One of our hunters, Nells, used to cast periodically, so he took over the role.  We’ve been making do.”

“Okay.  Clearly, I need to talk to your wannabe witch when we get a chance,” Ruby said.  “But for now, even a layperson explanation, what else do we have for protection?”

“Everyone wears anti-detection charms and our vehicles are also warded.”

“You said this car is extra protected?” Ruby asked.

“They all have the same charms, but this one is also armored.”

Sam took a closer look at the edge of the window next to him.  It was thicker than normal, apparently bulletproof. He wasn’t sure how much good that would do against angels or demons, but he felt a little better about the prospects of surviving an ambush by human survivors or Croats.  

“You said that all your people wear anti-detection charms,” he commented.  “If they’re hidden, how’re you supposed to find Dean and any other prisoners?” Personally, he didn’t feel optimistic about any of the others being alive still, but he didn’t want to be the one to say it, either explicitly or implicitly.

Castiel thought quietly for several seconds.  Sam couldn’t really blame the guy for not having an answer.  In hardly any time, the angel had had a huge responsibility dumped on him.  He’d successfully managed to take care of the most urgent priority, evacuating their camp.  It was expected that the logistics of a rescue mission wouldn’t already be settled after only a couple hours of riding in cars apart from whatever other advisors he had.

Before anyone could think of something to say, Connor started fussing.  Jo began anxiously rocking him, trying to soothe him. The little boy reached up for a hug.  As she embraced him, he looked over her shoulder and his green eyes watched his uncle.

Sam suddenly felt his heart sink as he stared at his nephew.  “Michael knows about your son.”

Jo shot him an offended scowl.  “Even if Michael did get ahold of Dean, he wouldn’t say a word about Connor.  He wouldn’t do that.”

“Michael has known about him since before he was born,” he speculated.  “Lucifer spoke to me in a vision. Months ago he could tell that we were having a second kid.  He could feel that he was getting another vessel.”

When Jo looked to Castiel for confirmation that such a thing was true, the angel nodded in quiet thought, then said, “It’s possible.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jo muttered as she covered her face with a hand.  She held her son a bit tighter with understandable fear. “How bad is it?”

“I’d expect for Michael to make destroying our camp a priority,” Castiel replied.  “He would likely take Connor, since he’s a vessel, or possibly as leverage to use against Dean.”

“He’d take Emma, Ada, and Sam too,” Ruby added.

“What?” asked Jo as she looked back at the other potential targets.

“Emma is supposed to get powerful enough to cripple armies and Sam already said yes to Lucifer once,” Ruby explained, then asked, “If Michael gives Sam back to Lucifer, can he just repossess Sam on the spot?”

“I don’t believe this,” Jo groaned, realizing how potentially catastrophic that scenario could be.

“ Tell us about it,” Sam told Jo in acknowledgment of her concern before turning to address Ruby's question. “He'd need my consent again in order to take me over again." His eyes avoided the others as they watched him. He swallowed some of his shame as his mouth wavered. "I'd try to hold on as long as I....  If it happens, I'll try to buy you time... but I won't last."

Ruby took his hand and squeezed it. "You know the stakes better than anyone. You'd last longer than anyone else, even if that isn't as long as you'd like."

After waiting a beat to allow Ruby's words to hopefully provide some comfort to Sam, Castiel regretfully moved onto the unfortunate next logical issue.   “If both of you say yes—“

“He won’t,” Jo interjected.

“—then we would have some time to try to stop the final battle, but it would likely be a very short amount of time,” Castiel speculated.

“You’re assuming any of us survive Michael’s guys showing up and taking Sam,” Ruby pointed out.


	20. Winter: The Breaking Point

After driving for a few hours, their caravan stopped for the night in order to set up a temporary camp.  Sam suspected that the decision had been made to not travel to the end of their gasoline supply, in order to help in the eventual rescue mission.  Presumably, Dean had gone missing several hours from their current location—far enough away that they weren’t in immediate danger, yet close enough that the rescue party could get there and back on a single tank of gas.

The lead car had made a call over their walkie-talkies to indicate that there was a clearing that appeared to be big enough for them to settle.  The clearing had actually turned out to be a thinly wooded area a hundred yards off the side of the road. It wasn’t as deeply hidden as it could’ve been, but it wasn’t obvious and it didn’t require some secret knowledge of the local wilderness.  A rest stop or campgrounds might’ve been nestled in trees farther from the road, but they would also be an obvious target for any pursuers.

Rather than risk getting in the way, Sam and Ruby decided to wait in the SUV as long as possible while the majority of the rebels assembled tents and otherwise prepared camp.  Sam had to admit that there was a certain appeal in staying inside the bulletproof vehicle, though he wasn’t sure if he was more concerned about Michael’s forces or Castiel’s troops.  Regardless, the car was somewhat warm and had cushioned seats. 

He’d suggested that his family just stay in the car rather than occupy one of the group’s tents, but Castiel politely informed him that everyone else would probably be a lot more comfortable with them somewhere where they could be monitored.  He supposed that made sense. Admittedly, it was probably a risky move to leave prisoners, one of which who knew how to hotwire cars, to spend the night in their most defensible vehicle.

When the small tent city was done, Castiel guided them to his and Ruby’s designated shelter.  He held Emma close with one arm while wrapping the other around Ruby. The act was both to help them support each other—they were barely starting to recover from the period of starvation—and also to defend her.  Some instinct in him wanted to shelter her and their daughters from the sights of the hunters in the camp.

As they walked through the camp, dozens of wary eyes watched them.  Several of the guards, including the pair that had beaten him in the cell, lingered, ready to jump in at the first sign of trouble.  He and Ruby weren’t wearing handcuffs anymore, but he didn’t feel anywhere near safe. They were given a tent just big enough for their family, located in the very center of the camp—surrounded.

They stayed in their tent as much as possible in order to keep to themselves.  At dusk an extra canteen of water, some smoked meat, and a bowl of cooked barley was delivered for them to share.  For a little while, he hesitated to tell Emma a bedtime story, disturbed by the presence of many people in earshot.  But there were enough ambient sounds and he was desperate to give his daughter some measure of normalcy, so he eventually broke down and told her the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves while putting her to bed.

Sam couldn’t sleep.  He was warm enough, between the sleeping mat, two heavy wool blankets, and Ruby’s body heat.  She was lying next to him with Ada sleeping on her chest. Emma sprawled across him, one small hand grabbing the collar of his shirt, the other gripping Ruby’s top.  He softly rubbed Emma’s back until she sleepily shifted, letting go of him, then gently repositioned her so that she was supported by Ruby’s arm and a pillow. She snuggled into her mom’s side.  Ruby raised an eyebrow at him, wordlessly asking what he was up to.

“I need to stretch and get some air,” he whispered.

After making sure that they were tucked in, he crawled out of the tent, put on his shoes, then gingerly walked through the camp towards the closest edge.  Several patrolling guards spotted him, but he made a gesture indicating that he had to pee, so they gave him some distance. Once he was done he sat down on a fallen log at the edge of the camp.  

He didn’t know which direction to watch for threats, so he straddled it.  The darkness of the woods around them could easily hold Michael’s minions, Croats, or any number of other unpleasant things.  Inside the camp, his family was surrounded by their armed captors, who were almost certainly eager to take out their grief and frustration.

Despite his concerns, he had to admit that things had improved significantly compared to a day earlier.  Ironically, the greater worsening situation had left everyone focused on a common threat, taking some of the pressure off of them specifically.  What was the phrase? "Two steps forward, one step back?"— He wasn’t sure that the potential of Michael’s presence could only count as a single setback.  The whole thing was too damn emotionally confusing.

He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Castiel.  The angel nodded to an untaken portion of the log he was sitting on, silently asking if he could join him.  Sam appreciated that his permission was being sought for once in the last eight days. He gestured to the seat.

Castiel sat down, then, to Sam’s immense surprise, pulled a joint from his pocket and lit it.  He took a puff while studying the camp full of people under his command. After several seconds he muttered, “Not sleeping was easier when the nights weren’t so damn cold.”

Sam couldn’t help but smile at the oddly-human behavior and comment.  The guy wasn’t wrong. 

“Do you know what day it is?” he asked the angel.  He wondered if they’d survived the winter solstice and were very slowly on their way to longer, warmer days.  “Is it winter yet?”

“I think it’s somewhere between December 28th and January 5th,” Castiel replied.

Sam raised an eyebrow at there being such a large window.  The guy was an angel after all; he was supposed to know trivial things like that.  “You don’t know what day it is?”

“When everything started coming apart people stopped keeping calendars.  Missions are always ‘five days out’ instead of ‘on May third.’” He shrugged apologetically.  “Some people came up with the idea of saying that every month is thirty days long so that it’s an easier system.”

“Yeah, but there aren’t 360 days in a year,” Sam replied, surprised that laziness would win out over accuracy.

“Go ahead and tell them that under their system December 22 will be the middle of summer in thirty years.  You think they’ll care?” Castiel took another puff.

“Well, when you put it like that....”

They sat in silence for more than a minute.  Sam had no idea what to even say. There was so much ground to cover just based on the nature of their current circumstances.

“Thank you for….”  He wanted to say that Castiel had been understanding or reasonable or compassionate, but that all didn’t seem to encompass what he’d done over the last few days.  “Thank you for everything. We knew there were risks coming here. We knew that with everything that’d happened, maybe it was too much. I don’t blame him for hating Ruby and me, but the kids didn’t….”

“Dean doesn’t hate your children,” Castiel told him.  “He checked on Emma five times before he left for his mission.”

That news was entirely surprising.  He hadn’t expected for Dean to want to get within thirty feet of his kids.  The fact that he’d gone to check on Emma, with her inhuman eyes, was even more disorienting.  Maybe it was wishful thinking, but the thought gave him a glimmer of hope that maybe his brother had softened somewhat behind the scenes, away from the eyes of his subordinates who expected him to maintain a level of strength.

“Does he hate me?”

Castiel thought about the question for a long while before replying, “I think he’s hurt and confused—” he lowered his voice “—and probably not thinking as clearly as we’ve come to expect.”

Sam nodded in acknowledgment of that guess.  He wasn’t about to take on feelings of responsibility for Dean’s capture, but he could see how his brother might not have been in the best headspace going into what had turned out to be a dangerous mission.  Having Sam’s near-resurrection, a nephilim niece, and the return of his old nemesis sprung on Dean had undoubtedly shaken him in ways that his subordinates couldn’t have even predicted.

“Well, I know he hates Ruby,” Sam said.  “I’m sure her showing up messed him up.”

“Humans have very peculiar memories,” the angel commented while examining his joint.  “Your experiences shape your opinions, but your opinions color what’s worth remembering.”

Sam took a moment to parse the observation and decided that it was probably a fair representation of the species.  “Yeah, we’re pretty flawed that way.” He furrowed his brow as he realized that the non sequitur had been strangely timed, nearly pointed.  “Is there something you want to say?”

Castiel watched the silent camp for a long while, then quietly said, “Everyone seems to be perfectly willing to forget that I helped send you down the path to freeing Lucifer.  I freed you from your cell at Bobby’s home.” The angel waved his hand, gesturing to his sleeping allies. “‘You were just following orders,’ they might say. Well, I’d guess Ruby was too.  And you, you were lied to.” He took another hit, then blew out the smoke while adding, “How fucked up is that?” 

Sam stared at the angel in utter shock.  Someone aside from Ruby was sympathetic to his situation.  He hadn’t dared to hope that someone might understand—maybe even forgive him on some level.  For nearly a year he’d felt like for the rest of his life he’d only be able to count on Ruby and their kids, but maybe that was wrong.  Maybe there was reason to hope. A few tears welled up in his eyes before trickling down and chilling on his cheeks.

Castiel saw him crying and commented, “I suppose it would be foolish for me to ask if you’re alright.”

Looking around the hostile, temporary camp, waiting for an army of angels to ambush them, Sam chuckled at the absurd thought.  “Oh, I am far from alright,” he admitted. 

“You tried to make things right.”

“It didn’t work.”

Castiel gestured around their temporary camp.  “Nothing anyone tried worked.” He took another hit.  “Everybody’s so uptight. We’re all in the same fucked-up boat.  I wish we didn’t have all this negativity.” He let out a silent sigh.  “And I’m in charge; that’s not a good thing.”

“It’s been a good thing for me,” Sam replied.

“You haven’t seen me command in the field.”  Castiel’s brow scrunched up, possibly double-checking the accuracy of the statement.  “I led a garrison here for a short time. But even as a commander, I had a superior, and Heaven's orders were... unquestionable.  Faith made everything so clear. But it’s different with humans. They doubt and second-guess. They’re… less predictable.”

“Their capacity for uncertainty is rubbing off on you,” Sam speculated.

“Skepticism, discomfort, fear—whatever this is, I’m sure it’s a useful survival tool in moderation, but I’m not really thrilled to be picking it up,” Castiel complained.  He pulled his jacket tighter around him. “It’s like this damned sensitivity to cold; it might be a good instinct, but I could do without it being so intense.”

Taking a closer look at him, Sam could see some goosebumps on Castiel’s exposed wrists.  Angels didn’t have that reflex. They could endure extreme temperatures before their bodies started attempting to regulate back to a more normal range.

“Cas….”  Sam hesitated to bring up something that was unpleasant.  “Are you waning?”

It was another piece of knowledge he’d acquired from Lucifer that slotted together with his visions.  With the other angels slowly succumbing to its effects, it wasn’t hard to believe Castiel would also be affected.  The gradual degradation of the angels would be even worse for one so far removed from the power of Heaven. It could prove fatal with enough time and neglect.

The angel turned to him and smiled slowly.  “You really do have an angelic lexicon in your mind, don’t you?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’ll be alright.  As much as I might complain, mortal existence isn’t nearly as daunting as it was at the beginning.”  Castiel held out the joint to him.

Sam debated the risks for a moment, then accepted it.  He took a small, cautious puff before handing it back.

“Do you miss the Garden?” Sam asked.

He didn’t fully understand what the Garden was.  No human could comprehend it, and as much as he was mistaken for something else, Sam was human in many ways.  As far as he could gather, the Garden was the beating heart of Heaven. It was profound in its beauty, so much so that despite having some of Lucifer’s memories of it, he had no idea what it looked like.  Any image his mind could create would be imperfect and therefore inaccurate. The only sensation that he had access to was the feeling of wonder and love that Lucifer had for it.

Castiel thought for a long time before replying simply.  “Yes.”

Sam nodded.  Any other answer would’ve been either insane or a lie.  Part of him didn’t even know why he’d bothered asking a question that could only have one answer, but when he searched his motivation he realized that he was testing the waters.  He was scared to ask the more difficult question of the one person who seemed to be on his side—or at least not against him.

“It’s also dying, isn’t it?”

“Can you feel it too?”  Castiel’s voice was almost wistful.

“Feel…?”  He considered the question for a few seconds.  “It isn’t a feeling. I don’t have a line on Heaven anymore—  But it makes sense somehow. There’s something…. I can’t put my finger on it.”

Castiel tossed the joint blunt into the snow, then pulled a pack of gum from his pocket and offered Sam one.  He took a stick, unwrapped it, slipping the tinfoil into his pocket, before popping the gum in his mouth. The mint flavor was incredible, reviving memories of a better time.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had that.”  He nearly groaned the words in his pleasure.  “It feels like it’s been millennia.”

“I suppose you’re one of the few humans that can say that sincerely.”  Castiel chuckled as he put a stick of gum in his mouth, then patted Sam on the shoulder.  “You know you’re the closest thing I’ve had to a brother in years.”

“Right back at you.”

Castiel furrowed his brow a bit.  “In your visions, have you seen many of my siblings?”

“Maybe a few dozen,” Sam replied.

“Are they waning too?”

Sam hesitated for a moment.  He didn’t know how Castiel felt about his siblings, but the thought of telling him that they were slowly being poisoned too, it was a hard thing to do.  He nodded solemnly.

“I guess the Garden really is dying,” Castiel said with sincere disappointment.  “Our powers derive from our connection to Heaven, but that’s all dependent on the strength of Heaven.  As the Garden dies, my siblings should feel it, just as much as me.”

The Garden thrived off of the devotion and conviction of the angels.  The root of its illness was the wavering faith of its children. Over the last eleven months, the prophesied destruction of the world had been experiencing a major setback with the loss of Lucifer’s vessel.  Having actually lost ground on the Apocalypse must’ve been deeply unsettling for the angels who had backed either eschatological side. That hit to their pride had infected the Garden itself and turned back on all the angels as a subtle poison.

“Lucifer and Michael’s angels are losing their conviction, and that’s weakening them,” Sam mused aloud.  But if the loss of an archvessel was enough to harm the entire species, what would happen if they had a victory?  He looked over at Castiel with renewed concern. “We need to find Dean.”

* * *

_ Dean’s wrists were manacled and chained to the stone floor of an abandoned church.  His lip was split. Blood coated his teeth and gums as he shifted his jaw, experimenting to see if it was broken.  Bruises were starting to form along the right side of his face, down the collar of his shirt to cover much more of him.  He sat, hunched, barely able to hold himself upright, but he stubbornly didn’t let himself collapse. _

_ Two angels stood in front of him.  Sam recognized Zachariah, Heaven’s number one salesman, and Raphael, the archangel and most powerful enforcer of Heaven.  Dean was being worked over, but not for information—they would have all the information they needed once Michael was in him.  They were making the pitch.  _

_ “No,” Dean muttered.  Blood and spit dribbled from his lips to the small puddle forming on the floor below him. _

_ “You should really invest in stronger subordinates,” Zachariah commented.  “We know your people are in the forest east of here. Our scouts are already searching for them.”  He made a show of checking his watch. “Personally, I don’t know why you’re stalling. I mean, yeah, maybe eventually we’ll lose some of our leverage when we kill everyone you know, but really, what does that get you?” _

_ A pink tear trailed down Dean’s cheek as he shook his head.  He wasn’t even staring at his captors. He was looking through them at nothing.  “No.” _

_ Zachariah strolled around the room for a moment while devising a new approach.  “I’ve heard that you’re a sharp guy. To evade capture this long, I guess you were doing something right.  So how about we look at this from a win-win perspective. Fun fact: Lucifer isn’t in your brother anymore. His forces are weak and you wouldn’t even have to kill Sam to stop him.  This could be the only chance you have to defeat Lucifer’s forces without destroying what’s left of the world.” The angel grinned at him with a sickening lightheartedness. “We aren’t unreasonable.  We know you have a child. If you say yes, we promise that your child will be safe. You’ll even have the chance to spend time with them. Once Lucifer’s forces are defeated Michael won’t need your body—“ _

_ “Bullshit.  Michael isn’t just gonna let me go as long as Lucifer’s still alive.” _

_ The salesman waved his hand in a way that neither acknowledged nor dismissed the point.  “If Lucifer has no vessel for you to fight, what does Michael need you for?” _

_ Dean didn’t say anything for several seconds.  Raphael stepped forward and grabbed him by the head.  The archangel’s right hand gripped his cheek, resting a thumb ominously over Dean’s left eye.  There was a hissing noise as the flesh burned in response to Raphael’s touch. Dean screamed as his eye was gouged and charred away, but when he was dropped back to the floor it had been restored—ready to be taken again if necessary. _

_ Zachariah leaned in closer and whispered, “If you don’t say yes, that’s fine.  We’ll just find your camp, take your child—killing everyone else that’s there, of course.  Then we just have to wait until the little tike is older. Fifteen years is probably enough time.   _ _ Getting the kid this young, we can probably kick it for laughs and still turn its head so around that it'll say yes to anything just to be a good little boy or girl. _ _  In the meantime, we’ll keep you around as an insurance policy.”  Zachariah smiled. “And when I say ‘around,’ I don’t mean around the kid.  You’ll be too busy getting an up-close-and-personal tour of every town and human settlement that we destroy."  He shook his head and chuckled with sincere pleasure. "No. The next time that you see your baby’s face again will be when Michael is wearing it as he skins you alive.” _

_ Dean was trembling.  His breathing was fast and ragged, but it wasn’t clear if that was from an injury or sheer terror.  Sweat was beading on his skin despite the freezing cold stone floor that he was lying on. For a moment his body shook before he gasped to get air.  He was hyperventilating.  _

_ Zachariah knelt down beside him and placed a hand on Dean’s shoulder, stopping the attack, then in a gentle voice asked, “What are you holding on for?  There’s nothing left to fight for except your little ragtag group of survivors. There’s no winning this game. You’re just being stubborn because you don’t know how to accept that you lost this thing years ago.  There’s nothing wrong with reassessing your goals. You can still protect your people, your family. I’m here to deal, after all. Tell me what I can do for you.” _

_ “None of my people—“  Dean stopped himself and rethought his word choice.  “Nobody in my camp gets hurt.” _

_ “Fine.  Do we have a deal?” _

_ A few more tears rolled down Dean’s cheeks as he nodded, unable to speak.   His lip quivered for a moment and his voice cracked. _

_ “Yes.” _


	21. Winter: Getting to Yes

Sam woke up panting.  He stared at the inside of the tent while trying to come to grips with what he’d witnessed.  He’d seen Dean in a church, being tortured and then— They didn’t have much time. 

He started getting up, but Emma was clinging to his shirt.  She wasn’t asleep; she just wanted to be close to him. Rather than try to dislodge her and unload both children on Ruby, he wrapped his jacket around the infant to take her with him.

“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked him.

He leaned in close and lowered his voice so as not to immediately alarm the whole camp.  “I saw Dean. He says yes.”

Ruby’s eyes widened, then she gestured for him to hurry and go tell the others.  Sam climbed out of the tent to find far more people than the night before milling about in the first hour of daylight.  After a little searching, he found Castiel sitting with Jo, having some coffee in front of her tent while she fed her son.  They looked up at Sam when he approached. Based on the expressions of mild concern that formed on their faces, he must’ve looked thoroughly rattled.

He didn’t know how to break the news to Jo, but he wasn’t about to pull Castiel off to the side in some attempt to hide the information from her.  After a moment of hesitation he cut to the chase. “Dean is gonna say yes.”

Castiel actually lost some color in his skin at the revelation.  Meanwhile, Jo turned a bit flush with outrage at the suggestion.

“There’s no way!” she said defensively.  “He wouldn’t do that.”

“I saw it in a vision.  He was being tortured—”

“He has a son.”  Jo shook her head, but a tiny amount of the outrage on her face had faded into worry.  “He wouldn’t risk Connor’s life.”

“I get it.  I don’t want to believe it either.  I want to believe that he’s better than this, but trust me when I say that it doesn’t work like that.  They didn’t break his will until there was nothing left but the word ‘yes,’” Sam replied. “He read the room and took a deal to try to save the lives of Connor and everyone else in this camp.”

“He knows saying yes to Michael means that Heaven gets their own walking killing-spree.”  Jo’s voice was less confrontational and she held her son closer. A fatigued fear began creeping into her features.  “He knows it’s a one-way trip.”

“He knows Lucifer is out of Sam,” Ruby said from behind Sam.

He turned to see her standing, cradling Ada in her arms.  Roughly a dozen of the rebels stood around them, but Sam was grateful to see that none of them had their weapons drawn in their capacity as his and Ruby’s guards.  No, everyone was too busy listening to the discussion.

“He saw Sam with Lucifer out of him,” Ruby continued.  “That means he doesn’t think it’s a one-way trip. He’s going into this not realizing just how fucked things are.”

Jo looked at Sam before asking, “How did you get Lucifer out of you?”

“Ruby did it.”

“A divine banishment spell,” Ruby explained.  “It more or less tears the figurative limbs, wings included, off every angel in the area and boots them back to an ethereal plane,” she elaborated, reading the lack of understanding on their faces.  “It’s basically a really big stun that makes them incorporeal and sends them a few layers of reality over.”

Castiel turned to the expert witch.  “Can you perform the spell again?”

Ruby’s eyes widened and she took a half-step back before realizing that she was surrounded.  “No. No fucking way. I’m not risking my life for him.” She looked to Sam. “You shouldn’t be thinking about risking your life for him either.”

Sam knew she didn’t want to hear him try to rationalize his brother’s anger and cruelty towards them.  She hadn’t wanted to hear anything positive about him even back before the whole Apocalypse thing. So he tried another appeal.

“He knows we’re with the rebels and that we have Emma.  She’s too powerful for Michael to ignore.”

“I’m all for someone stopping Michael, but it doesn’t need to be us.  It doesn’t need to be you. Let them go get him and we’ll haul ass in another direction,” Ruby argued.

Sam wanted to point out the small crowd of rebels standing around her who didn’t appear to be thrilled about the idea of their prisoners—and best hope at saving Dean—running away.  Granted, Ruby looked adamant enough that she might well have stared down the whole camp on her way out.

“I think he tried to save us,” Sam told her.  “The original deal was that his people wouldn’t get hurt, but he changed it to everyone in the camp.  That change only helped us. Maybe it’s small, too-little-too-late, cold comfort, whatever— But when push came to shove I think he tried to protect our family.”

“When you say ‘in the camp…’” Jo began with clear concern in her voice.

“I don’t know if that means the old camp or any camp,” Sam replied.

“Heaven would likely interpret that ambiguity to suit their whims,” Castiel speculated.  “I’d expect for Michael to come for us.” He looked to Ruby and Sam. “And I suspect he’d take your children before risking confronting Lucifer’s forces directly.”

“You know we need to help them stop this,” Sam told Ruby.  “I wish it was different, but this needs to be done right.”

She glanced around at the unfriendly faces around her, then her gaze settled on Emma.  Her lips pursed subtly at conclusions that she didn’t like. She looked down at tiny Ada, sighed, then firmly stated, “We make sure the kids are protected: warding, guards, everything.  Then I’ll help. I’m not leaving them defenseless.”

“Understood,” Castiel replied, then turned to Jo.  “Can you help care for their children again?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—  Three kids?” Jo stared at the angel in exasperation.  “Sam should stay to help with them. He’s their damn dad.”  

For a split second Sam felt a small pang of hope at having one of the rebels refer to him as Emma’s dad, as opposed to her just being dismissed as Lucifer’s spawn.

“Anyway,” Jo continued, “there’s no point in having Lucifer’s vessel walk into the mix.”

Ruby nodded in agreement and for a moment Sam was struck by the stubborn determination written across both women's faces.  Had circumstances been different, he would have expected the two of them to start tag-teaming.

Castiel stood up from his seat to command some sort of authority and said, “Actually, Sam might be in a unique position to help us on this mission.  He knows more about angels than anyone aside from me—”

“Okay, wait,” Sam interrupted the angel.  “My knowledge is way too full of holes for anyone to consider me an expert on anything.”

Castiel turned to look at him, then asked, “Can you think of a few angels Heaven might send to defend Dean?”

His mouth felt suddenly dry as everyone watched him.  “Kamael, Dadrail…. If Dean hasn’t said yes yet, then Raphael or Azrael.”

In an almost baiting fashion, Castiel pressed on.  “Why would Raphael and Azrael not be there if Dean said yes?”

He knew exactly what Castiel was doing, but he wasn’t about to play dumb.  “Michael wouldn’t need archangels to defend him; it’d be a waste of resources.  Heaven never sends two archangels to the same place unless they’re fighting another archangel.”

“How many archangels have you fought?”

Sam’s voice was very quiet as he replied, “I wasn’t the one who fought them.”

There was a long silence that stretched as everyone processed the implications of that statement.  He could feel the rebel soldiers staring at him with new… well, he wasn’t sure that they had the capacity to fear him any more than they had before, but maybe they had a new appreciation of what he’d been witness to.

“Sam has extensive experience with angels, and he has visions—“

“I can’t do it on command,” he countered.

“That’s still more than any of us.”  Castiel turned to Jo. “Chuck can help you.”

Sam looked at his daughters.  He hated the idea of leaving them, even if they were lucky enough for it to be temporary.  But he knew that if Michael was left in control of Dean, the archangel would inevitably find them, and what were they to the Commander of the Heavenly Host?  Pawns. Ada and Emma would be held as prisoners, as redundant vessels or weapons to turn against the world. There was no doubt in his mind that the threats made against Connor, a vessel to the Commander of the Heavenly Host, would be extended to include two half-demon vessels of Lucifer.

“Fine, I’m going too.”

Ruby looked to him with a sad sort of understanding.  She didn’t like him going any more than he did, but when it came right down to it— enduring optimism, snarkiness, moments of weakness, all of that aside —they were both pragmatists.  They both knew that, as slim as the odds of success were, it was vital to win and everything that could be done to improve those odds was critical.

Castiel turned to Ruby.  “What do you need?” When a few of the rebels looked a little surprised that she was being asked for her input, he added, “You have the operative skills and Sam has the only recon.  You and Sam are lead on this mission.”

Sam glanced around at everyone’s reactions to the news that the prisoners were suddenly in charge.  The rebels were all rather stunned, but no one outright argued with their leader’s order. In a way, Castiel had made a pretty significant vote of confidence, exposing himself to pushback from his human subordinates by placing his trust in Sam and Ruby.  Granted, these were desperate times, calling for unusual steps, and it was hard to argue that anyone else had a better approach or intel to base a mission on.

“Well, first step is to get the divine banishment spell ready,” Ruby told them.  “Then even if they sneak up on us we can at least defend ourselves.”

“What kind of materials do you need?” asked one of the rebels.  “We don’t keep a lot of spell components.”

“Lucky for us it’s a low-quantity-high-quality recipe.”  Ruby looked to Jo. “I need his son’s blood.”

“You stay the fuck away from him,” Jo said as she held Connor to her.

“I don’t need a lot of it.  I’m not gonna drain him.”

“Is this really necessary?” Sam asked, plenty sympathetic to a worried parent.  “Is there a way you can use my blood again?”

“This isn’t a 'Dean' thing,” she explained.  “I need the blood of Michael’s vessel to ensure that the banishment is strong enough to boot him.”

“How’d you get Lucifer’s blood?”  He couldn’t imagine her being able to covertly draw blood from such a guarded newborn as Emma.

“Emma and I used to more-or-less share a circulatory system.  I lost enough blood during labor that I had what I needed to make it work.”

“Can you take my blood instead?” Jo suggested, trying to save her son the pain.

Ruby looked to Castiel and Sam.  “Do you two have any idea if Michael’s grace might still be lingering in her system?”

Sam shrugged.  It hadn’t even occurred to him that such a thing was possible under Emma and Ruby’s circumstances.  Neither had Lucifer; hence the blindside.

“I couldn’t say,” Castiel confessed.  “If my powers were stronger I might be able to detect trace amounts of grace, but I just don’t know at this point.”

“If we don’t get Michael’s grace in this, there’s no way of knowing if it’d be powerful enough to affect him,” Ruby warned them.

Jo’s face turned nearly unreadable with just a hint of angry resignation.  Her eyes narrowed subtly at Ruby and she chewed her cheek before asking, “How much do you need?”

“Half an ounce should do.”  

“Half an ounce?”  She looked down at her infant son, for whom half an ounce was a lot of blood.  “You’re fucking kidding me!”

Ruby shifted Ada to hold her with one arm, then put her free hand on her hip.  “Listen. I know you hate me and you don’t trust me and this is probably gonna just roll off you like water, but I don’t want to hurt your kid.  I’m not doing this for kicks. All things being equal, I don’t really care about Dean, you, or your son—I don’t even care enough to fuck you over.  But Sam still loves Dean, and he cares about you and the kid. I don’t need you to believe that I’m your new best friend and everything is great. I just need you to believe that I’m gonna try to save your family’s ass in order to save  _ my  _ family’s ass.  You got me?”

Jo eyed Ruby for a few seconds while considering what she’d just said.  “Okay. I can buy that,” she replied, then turned to the angel and asked, “Cas, can you at least knock him out for it?”

“Of course.”

Ruby looked to their resident angel.  “Cas, if you’re gonna go with us then I need to get you excluded from the banishment spell.  Otherwise it might accidentally tear your angelic ass apart.”

“I’m not as much of an angel as I used to be,” he pointed out.  “How much harm could it do?”

“If Sam and I are risking our lives, I’m sure as hell making this thing as strong as what I used on Lucifer, and it knocked him out for at least thirty minutes.”

Castiel nodded, processing the magnitude of the spell.  “If you don’t mind keeping me out of the effects of the spell, I’d prefer not to die on this mission.”

Ruby gently chewed her lip.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

The camp packed up and moved once more in order to get farther away from their old settlement, in case Michael’s troops were already on their trail.  There wasn’t a way of telling when the events in Sam’s vision took place and therefore whether Zachariah’s claims that scouts were already searching for the camp were true, but since Sam's intel indicated that Heaven's forces were or would be searching the eastern forest, the rebels swung south to flee that immediate area.  

Once they reached their second temporary campsite, Jo started working with the team that was determining where to establish their new settlement.  Ruby and Sam didn’t bother getting involved with those details. They weren’t equipped to figure out the logistics of sheltering over fifty people.  If they were so lucky as to survive the mission, they’d pretty much be happy wherever they landed as long as it was with their girls. Anyway, the less Sam knew about the rebels’ plans, the less information that would be passed to Lucifer if he was captured and repossessed.

Ruby enlisted Nells, the rebel with the most spellcasting experience, to help her gather a handful of items for the spell.  The assistant had seemed a little annoyed at his new responsibilities until he realized that he was actually learning from someone who knew what she was talking about.  Sam lay in their tent holding Ada and entertaining Emma while he watched Ruby carefully calculate a recipe. It made his heart ache with admiration to see her practicing her craft.

“I’m guessing you didn’t write out your calculations last time,” he told her.

“Yeah.  I couldn’t tip my hand, but I had plenty of time to run the numbers in my head.”  She tapped her pen against the pad of paper she was using. “Time isn’t really a luxury we have this go around.”

He frowned at the imprecise nature of his visions.  Without some sort of context, he had no idea whether they were merely clairvoyant or if he’d seen the future.  For all they knew, Dean could’ve already said yes, or maybe he’d be able to hold out for another week. If the vision was some sort of precognition then there was a chance that they could stop things from getting to that point.  Lucifer had used his visions to change the course of their future countless times; it was possible that they could too.

Still, Dean had gone missing almost three days ago.  It wasn’t unheard of for someone as stubborn as him to resist torture for much longer than that—  Hell, Dean had endured subjective years of torture by Alastair, and this time around he had even more motivation not to break.  But the same child that would normally be a buttress to his conviction had or would be leveraged against him at some point. The only question was how much time they had before Heaven to realize that they couldn’t just take what they wanted.  In order to get Michael’s vessel they’d have to strike a bargain with one of the hairless apes in his line. Who knew how long that humiliating epiphany would take. Hopefully a day or two longer.

When she was done making her calculations, Ruby leaned her head outside of their tent and shouted to her assistant, “Hey, Nells.  Go tell Cas that I need him.”

After a few minutes, Castiel poked his head into their tent.  He didn’t bother climbing all the way inside, but he did drape the door flap over him so as to minimize the heat that was escaping.

“Nells said that you wanted to see me.”

“Come on in,” Ruby told him.  “This is gonna take a few minutes.”

Sam sat up and pulled Emma onto his lap, making some space in the three-person tent for the angel.  It was a bit crowded, but the alternative was figuring out how to take both kids out into the cold. Getting his daughters sufficiently bundled up would either take a team effort and several minutes of Ruby’s precious time or a half hour of fumbling around the crowded tent if he tried to tackle the job on his own.

Castiel sat cross-legged, knees bunched up slightly in his cramped corner of the tent.  He appeared to be a bit uncomfortable, probably from being in the equivalent of their family’s personal space—that was an interesting development.  Maybe all those years living in close proximity with humans had finally taught him about personal space.

Her guest had barely gotten settled before Ruby got down to business.  “Cas, can you still heal people?”

“Not to any significant extent,” he admitted.  “I can knock people unconscious and dull pain, but in terms of healing injuries I don’t have juice anymore.”

“Good,” she said to herself, then quickly added, “Well, not good—  I think I can stop this banishment spell from touching you if I make us immune to each other’s powers and magic, but I kinda didn’t want to screw up your ability to heal me if that was still on the table.  Since it isn’t, let’s burn that bridge in the name of progress." Ruby took her utility knife, held it in her hands, and began reciting an incantation. 

Emma tried to reach out for her mom mid-spell, but Sam scooped her up and placed her back on his lap so that she wouldn’t interrupt.  “We’re letting Mama work,” he whispered to her as he kissed the top of her head.

When Ruby was done with the incantation she cut her left palm, then held the knife out to the angel.  “The slice doesn’t need to be deep or big. We just need to exchange blood while clasping hands.”

Castiel eyed the blade for a moment before taking it.  His face contorted slightly in discomfort as he dragged its sharp edge along his palm.  Sam hadn’t expected for a relatively minor wound to make a creature like him appear pained, but then he noticed Castiel’s cut almost sizzling.

“Demon blood and angel blood don’t mix,” he explained for Sam’s benefit.

Sam furrowed his brow slightly at the news.  Evidently, that was one of the pieces of angelic knowledge that was still lost in the fog somewhere.  But the discovery surprised him. He knew firsthand that Lucifer had touched demon blood without being harmed; he’d had Ruby’s blood on his skin numerous times.  Maybe Lucifer, as their creator, had been immune, or maybe it was literally a matter of blood meeting blood. He decided not to ask about things like ingestion or sexual contact.  Knowing Ruby, her curiosity would compel her to flick a little blood at Castiel’s eye to test the mucous membrane.

“I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible,” Ruby told him.

She extended her uncut hand and placed it on Castiel’s shoulder in an attempt to brace one or both of them.  The cautious move made Sam start to worry about just how bad the blood mixing was. Before he could ask Castiel braced himself in the same fashion against Ruby, then reached out and took her bloody hand in his.  They both grimaced and cringed in pain while smoke hissed from their palms. Ruby whispered a few words through gritted teeth before releasing Castiel. The two of them were both panting slightly while clutching their smoldering wounds.

Sam’s eyes widened at the extreme reaction to such a small amount of blood-to-blood contact.  “What would demon blood do to an archangel?”

* * *

The entire camp started packing up in anticipation of the mission.  While Sam and Ruby were off with the rescue party, the rest of the rebels were planning on relocating to a new stop.  The idea was that if any members of the party were captured and interrogated, Michael’s forces wouldn’t know the current location of the larger rebel group.  In order to make sure that the rescue party could find the next campsite, one soldier would stay behind to guide them upon their return. It wasn’t a perfect system, but they would take as many layers of insulation between Heaven and their camp as was possible on such short notice.

Sam and Ruby were packing up their supplies when Jo stopped in.  Sam had just finished transferring all of the nonessentials and baby supplies to his pack, which would be left with the main group.  Ruby’s pack would carry the vial containing the divine banishment spell, half a dozen syringes of her blood, two angel blades, and some basic first aid supplies.

Jo watched the precision that they both used in packing their equipment, then commented, “You look like you could do that in the dark.”

“We have,” Ruby replied without looking up before turning her attention to Ada, who had started fussing.

“We moved camp most days, so packing up became routine a long time ago,” Sam explained for her benefit.

“I still can’t believe you had a baby out there.”  Jo’s words weren’t quite a question, but rather testing some sort of absurd idea out loud.

“We didn’t really have a choice,” he said defensively.

Ruby looked up from Ada at the possibly critical statement from Jo.  She opened her mouth to argue, but Jo raised her free hand in forfeit.

“I-I didn’t mean—  It’s just, Connor is enough work holding still, and you were moving.”  Jo nodded toward Ada, then added, “And a second kid….”

Sam wasn’t sure how to respond to what might’ve been a compliment, or at least some acknowledgment that they had endured a lot over the last year.  Abstractly, the sympathy made sense coming from another parent, but he wasn’t expecting that sort of almost-compassion from one of the rebels, so it was still a welcome surprise. But then, looking at Connor, who certainly appeared to be the youngest member of the rebel camp, then looking at the newborn clothes that Ada was wearing, he had a realization.

“You gave us the baby supplies, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I remember how much of a pain in the ass it was when the camp had its first birth last year.”  She repositioned her son, then explained. “All of Connor’s clothes are hand-me-downs. I figured you didn’t have….  He didn’t need those anymore.” She nodded to Ada.

“We still appreciate it.”

Jo nodded in acknowledgment rather than figuring out the right words for the awkward situation.  She watched her son try to escape her grasp in order to reach Emma, who was seated on Sam’s lap. After a moment of hesitation, she released Connor, allowing him to crawl over to his cousin.  When Emma started wriggling around, Sam put her down on the ground so she could get to Connor. The three parents quietly watched their children cautiously study each other in some sort of precursor to what might actually become playing.

“Emma, are you making a friend?” Sam asked her in a quiet voice.

“I’ve met his parents,” Ruby told her eldest daughter.  “That kid is gonna be a bad influence on you.”

Jo sarcastically laughed at the suggestion that the half-demon child might be corrupted by her son.

They let the kids play for a bit while finishing the preparations for the rescue mission.  When they were ready, Jo collected Connor, giving Sam and Ruby a chance to say goodbye to their kids.

Sam took a few minutes to just hold his daughters.  He had no idea if Emma was capable of understanding what was happening.  That her parents were about to go away again. With a little luck they’d only be gone for less than a day, but he wasn’t sure she even knew what a day was.  

Meanwhile, Ada was still so young and vulnerable.  At only three days old she almost certainly was unaware of everything that was going on around her.  Ruby had been trying to hold her as much as possible, making sure that there was often skin-to-skin contact.  Supposedly that was helpful for premature babies. They had no way of knowing whether she was actually early or if her smaller size was related to any malnutrition during the last few weeks of the pregnancy.  Either way, they wanted to give her whatever benefits they could.

“Ada needs extra attention,” Ruby told Jo.  “She’s probably a preemie.”

Jo stared at the petite newborn.  “I can see that.”

“Hey, sweetie.  Mama and Dada are gonna go on a little trip, but we’ll be back soon,” Sam told Emma.  “You and Ada are gonna stay with your Auntie Jo.”

Jo subtly rolled her eyes at the title, but didn’t argue with the characterization.

“Bring him back,” Jo told them, her voice caught between demanding and pleading.

“Well, you’re keeping our kids as collateral,” replied Ruby.

“We’ll get him back,” Sam promised.

Rather than have Emma watch her parents leave the camp, they had Jo and Chuck take her into another tent for a while, allowing Sam and Ruby to depart with minimal heartbreak.  It felt cruel, but the alternative was to have Castiel knock her unconscious again, and there were only so many times that she could wake up to find her parents missing before she would begin to have a fear of sleeping.  Instead, Sam and Ruby listened grimly to the confused cries of their eldest daughter as they climbed into the SUV to go on their rescue mission.

Sam embraced Ruby, holding her tightly to both give and find comfort.  He held her in the back seat of the car as they started speeding down the road away from camp.  Though he knew it was necessary, leaving Emma for the first time in her whole life made Sam feel like his heart had been ripped out and left on the frozen roadside.


	22. Winter: Rescue

The rescue party consisted of nine soldiers, Castiel, Sam, and Ruby.  Much to Sam’s disappointment, one of the soldiers was the guard who had beaten him with the baton.  Unfortunately, the man apparently was one of the better fighters with an angel blade in camp. Thankfully, he was traveling in one of the other cars and hadn’t said shit while the party assembled.

Their route was carefully planned to travel along multiple roads that were free from snow.  The precaution added a little more time to their journey, but it prevented their cars from creating a path back to the rest of the camp.

As they traveled the two hours to the town Dean had been investigating, Castiel, Sam, and Ruby tried to do some last-minute brainstorming, the highlights of which were relayed over the walkie-talkies to the other cars.  It was one thing to have a plan: find and rescue Dean—or find Michael, use the divine banishment spell, and then rescue Dean. It was another thing to know enough about all the random variables to be able to improvise once they got into the field.  They were attempting to take back a prisoner of the Heavenly Host. There would be nothing simple or easy about their mission.

“If we are too late to stop him from saying yes, what’s that mean?” Ruby asked.  “I’m not talking about some generic ‘We’re all fucked,’ way. What are the real implications?”

“The world moving a minute closer to midnight on the doomsday clock should start healing the Garden, making the angels stronger,” Sam pointed out.

“How does that work?  Like, Dean says yes, Michael jumps his bones—”

Everyone in the car except for the driver turned to look at her.  The two redshirt soldiers that Sam hadn’t bothered learning the names of scowled at her insensitive description of their leader’s plight.  Castiel’s expression seemed to largely convey that he didn’t want to break up any fights between their own people. Meanwhile, Sam looked down at her, a bit disappointed that she wasn’t more delicate about something that hit a bit too close to home for him.

“Sorry,” she told him, having realized that she might’ve accidentally hurt him, but she didn’t direct any remorse toward the rest of the car full of people.  “So, if Michael possesses Dean, do angels start getting more powerful that second? Can Cas feel that sort of shift in the Force?”

“The strength of the Garden is directly impacted by the conviction of my siblings.  They’ll need to have found out about Michael taking his vessel for them to get their boon,” Castiel explained.  “There would be a slight delay as the army of Heaven became aware that Michael had possessed his vessel. Then there would be another increase once Lucifer’s angels became aware of the news.”

“That’s consistent with the opposite effect when Lucifer lost me,” Sam agreed.  “The angels took a little hit to their strength pretty early, but it wasn’t until after Heaven found out that I started seeing visions of angels really feeling the loss.”

“Maybe if we can get Dean back they’ll all just self-pity themselves to death,” Ruby muttered while staring out the window.  She quickly looked to their resident angel and added, “Present company excluded.”

Castiel rocked his head from side to side.  “When it comes to all things Heaven, present company is very excluded.”

Sam thought he heard one of the soldiers say something about needing a drink under her breath.  He couldn’t blame her. Their entire group was going on a mission that had bleak odds and a narrow definition of success.  With the exception of him, their entire rescue party was expendable to Heaven. And if he was captured, well, he was as good as dead.  He’d inevitably be handed over to Lucifer, bloodied, gift-wrapped, and probably with his entire family dead or prisoners of the other side.  

He could almost hear Lucifer’s pitch:  if Sam would just say yes, they could go rescue his daughters from Michael—assuming they survived the fallout of the next couple hours.  That’s how the world would end. Faced with that—Ruby dead, Dean possessed, Ada and Emma being held by Michael as pawns or future weapons of mass destruction—he’d say yes in a heartbeat.  The thought was so unsettling that he nearly missed Ruby changing the topic.

“—if so, Michael is going to know everything Dean knows.  That includes anything that Dean knows that’s wrong,” Ruby pointed out.  “So what does Dean _know_?”

“He knows I’m essentially powerless,” replied Castiel.  “For better or worse.”

“He knows that I’m having visions again,” Sam answered, then added, “but he doesn’t know that they don’t hurt me anymore.  He’s only ever seen me clutching my head in pain with those.”

“Be sure not to touch your head if you get any helpful insights while we’re there,” Castiel suggested.

“Alternatively, clutch your head and lie through your teeth,” Ruby countered.

Sam leaned forward a bit and asked, “Speaking of, Cas, do you think Dean believed me when I told him I don’t have telekinesis?”

Castiel and the other rebels once again turned around in their seats, but this time to gawk at him.

“Your telekinesis is back?” Castiel asked.

One of the rebels whispered, “He has telekinesis?  The meatsuit?”

“I’m not a meatsuit,” Sam replied indignantly, causing Ruby’s hand to waver slightly in the air, indicating a level of ambiguity.  He let out his breath in a small huff, then tried to move on. “My telekinesis is back, but so far it’s all been reflexive. Nothing we can count on.”

“I don’t think he’s expecting that,” Castiel speculated.  “He didn’t mention it as a threat when we were discussing you before he left.  Also, my telekinesis is essentially gone. I think….” He considered his words for a moment before continuing.  “I believe Dean thinks that there isn’t as much magic in the world anymore. We haven’t been using as many spells.  My powers have been fading. It’s less and less a part of our world.”

The idea was oddly chilling for Sam.  He’d been living with a witch for nearly a year and they’d still struggled against the reality of a gritty, material world.  Admittedly, a large part of engaging in the magical world was interacting with the people and creatures that could tap those forces; if they were dead, maybe that perception wasn’t wrong.  Magic was just another area of knowledge, a study of the natural world that Lucifer’s war had incidentally or intentionally decimated. He took Ruby’s hand with a little more reverence.

“Well, then….”  Ruby sounded slightly unnerved by probably a very similar train of thought, but she quickly put on a more lighthearted face.  “Hopefully, he won’t see it coming if you have to throw Michael through a brick wall at a hundred miles per hour.”

Sam tried to slouch as best he could in the cramped backseat so that the rebel soldiers would stop looking at him.

“No pressure.”

* * *

Dean had been leading a group to search a small village where a Bri’tav relic might’ve been.  In hindsight, it wasn’t clear if the intel was legitimate or if it had been fabricated as part of a trap to catch the long-coveted vessel.  Based on Sam’s vision they had reason to believe that at some point in the recent past or the near future Dean might be held in a stone church.  The church hadn’t appeared very large, hopefully indicating that it was somewhere not far from the village. If Heaven had taken him out of the area the rescue team would be hard-pressed to find him.  And yet, it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility that the angels would be so cocky as to torture him there.

The rescue party walked the last quarter-mile, approaching the abandoned village on foot with their angel blades at the ready.  Walking may have taken a bit longer, but it left them able to observe the environment better and reach their target with much less noise.  The snow that they were trudging through varied in depth from place to place. Sometimes it was shin-deep, but every once in awhile the ground dipped down, sending the snow up to their knees… or in Ruby’s case, the lower half of her thighs.

Sam felt nearly naked without his bow—not that it would’ve done him any good against angels.  He'd grown accustomed to walking through the wilderness, bow in hand, ready to spring. His eyes reflexively scanned the horizon for movement, though angels didn’t need to make their approach before his eyes.  Without a moment’s notice they could be standing beside him, weapon at the ready. His ears strained to hear what might be the flapping of wings hidden among the leafless branches shaking in a winter wind.

No one spoke for fear of giving themselves away.  As he walked beside Ruby, she touched his hand to get his attention before gesturing at him, then herself.  She put her two index fingers side-by-side, indicating that they’d stick together. Sam nodded to assure her that not splitting up was a major priority of his.  He mimicked the gesture and held it to his heart before reaching over to take her hand. The corner of her lip curled up at his sweet talking.

The town was covered in snow and frost, giving it the stillness of a scene set in glass.  It would be picturesque, untouched beauty but for the little details: a front door left ajar here, a shattered window there, flower pots overturned and spilling lifeless dirt onto a covered patio.  

A path cut through the snow ahead of them.  Several people had walked down the street, incidentally creating reliefs in the knee-high, white powder.  The tracks were tightly positioned together, until about a hundred feet ahead of them. At that point something had happened, sending those people in different directions.  Large gouges and ridges of displaced snow hinted at some sort of chaotic battle.

Since the party’s disappearance several days earlier it had snowed upwards of six inches.  There was a fair chance that the corpses of the missing rebel soldiers were somewhere out there, hidden below the fresh powder.  

One of the houses had protective warding written in blood on its exterior walls.  The door was partially open, revealing a man in a heavy, green jacket with a wool blanket hunched in the corner of the living room.

“Dean,” one of the soldiers said, probably recognizing his jacket.

“Wait,” Sam quietly warned the rebels.  Something was very wrong with the setup.  His stomach dropped. Dean hadn’t been wearing his jacket in the vision of him saying yes.

Before he could tell the others, Ruby observed aloud, “That warding goes on the inside.”

“It’s a trap!” Sam told them.  There wasn’t any point being subtle.  “That isn’t Dean.”

The soldier took a curious step toward the house to get a better view while saying, “How can you—“

As soon as Sam heard the flapping of wings, he used his arm to let Ruby know to hold still for a moment while he pivoted, positioning them to be back-to-back.  That way an angel couldn’t sneak up behind either of them. He held up his blade, knowing perfectly well that Ruby was doing the same.

The group of rebels were surrounded by nearly twenty angels.  Predictably, two of them focused on Sam; he was instantly identifiable and the most valuable of the ambushees.  Rather than stepping forward to meet them, Sam stayed where he was, trying to prevent an opening between him and Ruby that could be taken advantage of.  The pair of angels glanced at each other, apparently realizing that he wasn’t about to leave himself open to flanking, then moved together to fight him. He tried to take a broad, horizontal swing to keep both of them back, but the right angel blocked the strike, defending her brother.

Instead of lunging forward to deliver a lethal blow, the second angel gripped Sam’s left arm, yanking him forward, away from his defensive position back-to-back with Ruby.  Sam quickly swung his blade at the angel, slicing a deep gash across his torso. He’d barely wound up for another attack when the second angel hit him with telekinesis, knocking him back about twenty feet, separating him from the group.  He landed on the soft snow, saving him from serious injury, but, by the time he got upright, there was a seraph, Kamael, blocking him from the others.

He could hear the clashing of blades and the screams of their people suddenly being cut short.  Beyond Kamael he saw Ruby stabbing an angel with her blade while holding another at bay with some sort of spell.  Sam wanted to keep watching her, to make sure that she was okay, but he had his own looming fight to worry about.

He recalled that Kamael was a brute who had a reputation among angels for enjoying bludgeoning people.  Without an effective ranged weapon, under better circumstances Sam would’ve just tried to evade him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t outrun anyone in the snow, let alone someone who could fly, and he needed to get to Ruby, who was on the opposite side of the thuggish seraph.  He didn’t have a better idea and time was of the essence, so he raised his blade and hurried forward through the thick snow as quickly as he could.

Kamael barely even bothered parrying his attack.  Instead the angel endured a hit to his upper left shoulder in order to lunge forward and headbutt him.  It was a miracle Sam’s skull didn’t fracture from the hit. Everything turned black for a moment as Sam stumbled back a step.  When his vision returned, every white surface of the winterscape had an intense, jagged halo of multichromatic light. New memories started clicking together in his mind, flooding him with a dizzying collection of images and sensations.  He could hardly reorient himself back to reality before he was under attack.

The angel grabbed him by his throat and shoved him backwards, knocking him off his feet.  Sam landed and was pushed down into the snow until he hit the hard, frozen earth. The icy, white powder collapsed onto him, burying him.  The hit to the head, the strange barrage of memories, and being submerged in the cold triggered a crippling sense of panic in him. It felt too much like being consumed by Lucifer.

He instinctively kicked and flailed his arms, trying to get the seraph off of him before Kamael could land another hit.  Somewhere in the mess he’d lost his angel blade and was unarmed. Inhumanly strong hands held him down, but the angel let go a second before shifting his weight off of Sam’s torso.  There was the sound of metal hitting metal and limbs colliding. Someone was fighting more or less directly above him. He hesitated for a second to sit up right then, potentially risking an angel blade to the face.  But that second of hesitation proved to be enough because he immediately heard the muffled thud of a body collapsing beside him.

A smaller hand reached through the snow to grab his.  He squeezed back, then was pulled upward. Ruby was standing over him.  She had several deep wounds, but none of them had connected with her vulnerable core or head.  Her pack with the spell reagents was slung over one shoulder, having been opened a few times to grab a lesser spell or two.  She helped him to his feet, handed him a syringe of blood as a temporary weapon, then started leading him back to where the main fight had been—where, hopefully, it was still going on.

Sam followed her, but he was still dizzy and distracted by the strange afterglow of everything around him.  As he stumbled after her he could’ve sworn he heard a faraway cry for help that echoed from the depths of an endless pit.  He froze. It had sounded kind of like Dean. Following some intuition, he turned around to see Dean standing about ten feet from him.  

For a split second his hope got the better of him.  He thought that maybe their luck had changed and his big brother had somehow escaped, but as his eyes scanned Dean, subtle details began painting a different portrait.  Dean was standing too straight. His expression was neither warm nor angry—he was inconvenienced.

Sam didn’t even try to engage him in a fight; he turned and started running back, closer to where Ruby was.  She had the divine banishment spell in her bag and wouldn’t cast it until she knew that Michael was in the area of effect.  He didn’t dare call out to her to inform her that Michael was there. If Michael was remotely intelligent or if Dean was sufficiently wary of Ruby, that would just bring unwanted attention to her.  Instead he assumed that at any moment she would see him being pursued by Michael and hopefully she’d be able to get the spell off.

Unfortunately, running from an archangel was just as futile as he’d expected it to be.  Michael appeared directly before him, blocking his path. From the corner of his eye, Sam could see that Ruby was fighting another angel, unable to pull the spell from her bag to use it.  He wasn’t sure how to buy enough time for her to win her brawl and complete the spell.

“Dean, I know you’re in there.”  He knew all too well that his brother wouldn’t be able to take control, but maybe their shared consciousness would be still new enough that Michael might find Dean’s emotional reaction to the plea at least a bit disorienting.

The archangel’s brow furrowed slightly as he tilted his head, undoubtedly studying some internal turmoil, but within a second it was gone.  Sam recognized that immediately; he’d buried Dean for the time being. Michael wasn’t playing around with curiosities as his little brother had.  There was work to be done.

Michael clutched Sam by the front of his jacket and reached out to touch two fingers to his forehead.  Instead, Sam grabbed his wrist, then stabbed Michael with the syringe of Ruby’s blood. He pressed the plunger down, forcing the unholy liquid into the archangel.  Michael let out a roar of what might’ve been either pain or outrage, then snapped the syringe from its needle. Whatever effect the attack had had, it hadn’t been incapacitating, though it might’ve been annoying.  Michael looked at the syringe for a moment before tossing the nuisance aside. Sam tried to wriggle from his jacket or break Michael’s grasp on him, but he was too slow. Two fingers touched his forehead, then everything went dark.

* * *

Sam slowly opened his eyes.  His head ached, but not nearly as much as he had expected considering the state that Kamael had left him in.  He’d undoubtedly been healed after being knocked out, but that was probably the only good thing that could be said about his current state.  He was completely naked, haphazardly left in a heap on a freezing cold, smooth stone floor.

It was the same church that he had seen in his vision, the one where Dean had been tortured.  The wall sconces had been lit, illuminating the small nave with flame that did little to provide warmth.  Half a dozen unimpressive stained glass windows let in a faint glow, indicating that it was still daytime.  Unsurprisingly, the crucifix had been ripped from the altar, but the stone statues of the archangels remained—well, all the archangels except for Lucifer, of course.

To his left he saw Ruby.  She had also been stripped, but her right wrist was cuffed, secured by a six-foot-long chain to the stone wall behind her.  She looked over at him and sighed with some small amount of relief at the fact that at least he was alive. To his right, Castiel was naked and bound in the same manner as Ruby.  

The two non-humans were restrained.  Michael didn’t consider Sam as much of a threat as them.  Apparently, whatever concerns Dean had about him being a physical threat had been dismissed by the archangel.  Either that or there was something else at work. In the dim illumination of the torchlight, he could see a slight irregularity in the stone around him.  There was a faintly reflective ring around him. Holy oil. Someone was a snap of the fingers away from trapping him in fire. At least then he wouldn’t be so damn cold.

Ruby’s bag had been dumped out onto the floor, contents having been examined.  The vial containing the banishment spell was on the edge of the pile, having hidden in plain sight among all the syringes of Ruby’s blood.

His first reaction was to run over to Ruby and check on her, but with the ring of holy oil surrounding him they were almost certainly being watched.  Michael wouldn’t leave them unguarded while he was unbound with their supplies nearby. He tried to concentrate on seeing the future, desperate for any insight into what might happen next.  With some difficulty, he managed not to reach up to grab his head, and he stopped himself from straining so hard that he might risk a telltale nosebleed. The flickering image of Michael standing fifteen feet in front of him crossed Sam’s eyes, but he forced himself to not look directly at what might’ve been the archangel’s hiding spot.

The sound of footsteps echoed on the stone walls as a man approached from the entryway.  It was Zachariah, Heaven’s own silver-tongued snake. They were sending him in to try and close another deal before he had time to gather his senses—   Well, that was telling. Heaven wanted something from them and Sam was ninety-nine percent sure he knew what it was.

The cocky angel smiled at Sam as he approached his three prisoners.  “It’s good to see you again, Sam. You’re certainly looking—” He hesitated a moment while trying to find an accurate compliment.  “—alive.”

Sam scowled at Zachariah.  This wasn’t the angel they’d come for.  They wouldn’t get Dean back if Michael decided that the task of getting him to say yes could be handled by a subordinate.  And they had to know for sure that Michael was around when the divine banishment spell was cast. Otherwise, they’d risk losing their single shot.  As it was, he couldn’t tell whether Michael was invisible and incorporeal, watching everything from the location in the vision, or if there was merely a chance that he would show up.  It hardly mattered as long as Sam couldn’t discreetly communicate that to Ruby and if she was unable to complete the spell. He needed to get Michael to show himself.

“I want to see my brother,” Sam told him.  He hoped that the chattering of his teeth from the cold hadn’t been mistaken for fear.

“I’m sorry,” Zachariah said without an ounce of sincerity.  “Your brother isn’t your brother anymore.”

“Then I want to see Michael.”

“Michael has more important things to do than negotiate with something like you.”

“You’re full of shit,” Sam replied.

The angel gave a humorless laugh.  “That coming from a human, it’s rich.  Idioms aside, your biology—”

“Save the wittiness,” he interrupted, intentionally provoking the self-important salesman.  “I know just how sly you can be and it doesn’t matter. You won’t get anything out of me. No intel.  No yes. Just stop now before you embarrass yourself.”

“Listen here, you insolent vermin,” Zachariah hissed, having clearly lost his calm.  “You’re going to say yes or—“

“No.”

The angel walked over to Ruby, grabbed her by the back of the neck and lifted her up until her feet were dangling a few inches above the ground, then snarled, “Say yes or I’ll burn her to death from the inside out.”

“Don’t,” Ruby groaned through a pained grimace.

His instincts were screaming at him to get to her and save her, but he couldn’t do anything physical to help her.  Saying yes would damn their kids along with the rest of the world. As painful as the thought of her life being in danger, the alternative was something he knew she didn’t want for them.  But beyond the rational arguments about the fate of the world and Ruby’s wishes, there was another reason to stand his ground. Zachariah had just jumped to threatening what was most precious to him in the immediate area.  The angel had no way to escalate the attempt at intimidation.

Sam sat up and glared at Zachariah with all the icy loathing that he’d learned from Lucifer.  In a forceful growl he demanded, “Get. Me. Michael.”

Zachariah’s chest huffed a bit, thrown by his threat falling so flat and having lost the position of dominance.  His eyes flicked around anxiously for a moment, waiting for something to happen.

Michael was suddenly standing in the exact spot that Sam had seen in his vision.  The archangel told his subordinate, “Leave.”

Zachariah’s mouth opened briefly, eager to plead why he shouldn’t be taken off such a high profile deal, but he evidently had the good judgment to realize that the command wasn’t appealable.  He spared a venomous glance for Sam before unceremoniously dropping Ruby to the stone floor. He was gone before she hit the ground.

Sam stared at the archangel with more clarity than he’d had in the field, stunned by his appearance.  He had expected to simply see his brother moving and speaking in an unusual manner, but there was something more.  He recognized Michael. Memories from Lucifer flooded his mind, painting the moment with a strange sort of familiarity.  He couldn’t perceive Michael’s true form—those senses had left him nearly a year ago. Instead, he felt such a profound knowledge of the creature before him that for fleeting moments he hardly even noticed the vessel.  He’d come to save Dean, but for the time being the eldest Winchester wasn’t even a factor in the equation.

Michael seemed to nearly radiate with a strength that made Sam wobble on his knees and crumple back so that he was sitting on the chilly floor.  Ruby had scrambled a couple feet back, recoiling from him, but while she was chained to the wall she couldn’t escape the archangel. For his part, Castiel watched his brother with a knowing stillness.

“My brother’s vessel.”  Michael greeted Sam with a frightening lightheartedness in his voice.  “My vessel’s brother.” The archangel took a few steps forward, making it clear that he wasn’t particularly interested in his other, presumably-expendable prisoners.  “I should thank you, Sam. Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get Dean to say yes to me? Then you returned to his life and devastated him in hardly any time at all.  When you were Lucifer, he resisted me. He was scared to confront you; to confront his greatest failure. From time to time I could feel his helplessness fester. So many people depended on him and all the while his self-loathing turned to acid in his veins.  I thought he might snap under the pressure and give in, but he had his son and started to move on.” Michael smiled subtly. “Then you returned and reopened the wounds, spilling that poison he’d kept inside for so long.”

Sam had no idea what to say to something like that.  It was a clear opening move to help put him in his place after all the posturing that he had done with Zachariah, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.  He’d suspected that his presence and their argument had left Dean in a more vulnerable state. Hearing that it had, regardless of how much of a factor it had truly played, was rattling.

Seeing that his opening move had its desired effect, Michael turned to Castiel and studied him for several seconds with an expression of visible disappointment.  “I can’t tell you how much I wish you hadn’t put us in this situation. It was such a disappointment when you fell.”

“Disappointment to you,” Castiel replied.  “But I’m fairly confident that that will turn out to be the greatest thing I do in my life, however short that may be.”

The archangel let out a silent sigh, then informed him, “I’d prefer that we take you back to Heaven alive—a few of our researchers would love to examine the effects of your fall and the progression of your waning.  There’s been some talk about anticipating the declining strength of Lucifer’s angels. You might provide assistance to Heaven one last time before you die. But I suspect that a few of our less pleasant siblings are simply looking forward to pulling you apart to see what still ticks regardless.”

Having taken his brief shot at Castiel, Michael turned to stare at Ruby for a moment before commenting, “You brought the demoness along.  You must truly be desperate.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Ruby muttered.  “All things being equal, I couldn’t care less if you take Dean for a joyride.”

The archangel walked over and crouched down in front of her, then slowly reached out as if to clutch her jaw.  She recoiled from him, disturbed by the gesture, but didn’t make any sudden movements. Michael’s hand stopped a few inches short as he contemplated something for several seconds.

Sam could see the tension in Ruby’s body and suspected that she would have spared him a nervous glance if she hadn’t been terrified by the incredibly powerful angel right in front of her.  For his part Sam was holding his breath, waiting to see what Michael would do. He silently repositioned to get ready to sprint forward and tackle Michael should he try to smite her; holy oil be damned.

“Seeing you,” Michael told Ruby in a slow, thoughtful tone.  “It produces all sorts of feelings in Dean.”

“Nothing fluffy, I trust,” she replied quietly, voice shaking slightly.

“If I had to oversimplify so that you could understand… he hates you.”  Michael tilted his head to the side. “Probably more than he hates me.”

“Well, I’ve always been a love-you-or-hate-you kind of girl.”

Michael’s face lost some of its curiosity in exchange for coldness as his eyes drifted over to Sam.  That mild expression of resentment had to be some of of Dean bleeding through. It seemed too farfetched and hopeful to think that the eldest Winchester had any ability to effect change.  Instead, it was probably the fact that Michael was seeing the world through a lens of Dean’s experiences and biases.

The archangel turned back to her and commented, “You were pregnant the last time he saw you.  My brother made himself a nephilim and then you’ve gone and furthered his bloodline once again.  Tell me, was the second child male or female?”

She scowled at him.  “'The second child' is none of your business.”

“I’ll find the children:  your children; this vessel’s son, too.”  Michael thought for a moment, then glanced at Sam once again.  “Until you say yes to my brother, we have all the time in the world.  Maybe I should make my own nephilim and we can watch our children destroy this planet in our stead?  Let their grace fulfill our destinies.” The archangel smiled at the horrific suggestion. “Where is Jo?  I can’t begin to tell you how much he wants to see her again. It’s become a nuisance, hearing him screaming for her.”

Ruby’s glare seemed to intensify with loathing.  Sam could see her posture change, muscles coiling with tension.  She was seething. Michael had just crossed yet another line by suggesting that he force Jo to go through the same torture that Ruby had endured at Lucifer’s hands.  And beyond the abuse and torture, with Jo being human, birthing Michael’s nephilim would prove fatal.

“Go to Hell,” she snarled.

Michael didn’t react at first to Ruby’s hostility.  He seemed almost confused by it. Understandably so, Sam supposed; he was getting all his intel on her from someone who thought she was incapable of having empathy.  “How about a trade? If you tell me where Jo is, you can have your second child without reservation. You have my word that it won’t be harmed.”

Ruby hesitated briefly, but replied, “No.  You aren’t touching Jo.”

“Is that so?”  Michael gripped Ruby’s jaw and slowly started squeezing.

Sam hurried forward to stop him, but Michael grabbed him with telekinesis before he could get out of the ring of holy oil.  He hung in the air for a moment, toes barely touching the stone floor, before the archangel threw him back to the ground. The impact knocked the air out of him.  He gasped for breath as he pushed himself upright, then shouted, “Leave her alone! You want to deal with me, then deal with me!”

Michael released Ruby, then stood up and faced Sam.  The moment he’d let go of her, Ruby recoiled from Michael, but as she retreated she placed herself as close as she could to the pile of supplies containing the divine banishment spell.  While he wasn’t looking she reached to grab the vial, but she was five feet too short. Thankfully, the archangel didn’t seem to have noticed her, too enticed by the prospect of negotiating Sam’s surrender.  

“You’re ready to deal?” Michael asked Sam with a subtle smile.

“I’m ready to talk.”


	23. Winter: God's Most Precious Creation

Sam was honestly a little surprised that Michael hadn’t simply handed him over to Lucifer’s side with a tidy bow on him.  Between Alastair, Abaddon, and any number of lesser sadists over in Lucifer’s camp, there were safe odds that eventually he’d break down and cut a deal like Dean had.

He looked up at Michael and guessed, “You want me to say yes while I’m here.”

The archangel‘s expression was completely serene, indifferent to the accuracy of the guess.  “I’ll deliver you to my brother as you are if you make me, but I’d rather we settle this here and now without all the trite bloodshed.”

As far as Sam knew, when it came right down to it Michael’s forces didn’t sweat the casualties.  Bloodshed was par for the course when it came to the Apocalypse, especially to the Commander of the Heavenly Host.  He wasn’t concerned with losses sustained on delivery. He wanted to catch Lucifer when he was weakest, right after the start of possession.  Michael wanted Sam to act as bait. In theory, he didn’t mind playing that part if it guaranteed Lucifer’s death and if he could secure some sort of lasting protection for his family, but theory wasn’t practice.  He’d learned far too many times that things never turned out as smoothly as it seemed they should.

When it came right down to it, Michael didn’t know Lucifer like he did.  Sam knew with every fiber of his being that the creature that had lived inside him for two years was more dangerous than anyone gave him credit for.  Lucifer wouldn’t trust Sam saying yes in the middle of nowhere, having never been captured by his troops, not after having been so forcefully denied in countless dreams.  The red flag would be so obvious that it might as well have been a mile-wide bullseye painted in blood. Lucifer would take possession of him, but he’d hit the ground ready for a fight.  

And Sam knew just how it would go down.

It didn’t matter that Michael had placed him in a ring of holy oil.  Sam’s telekinesis wasn’t hindered by anti-angel magics. In his overconfidence, Michael hadn’t bothered to bind him in anti-magic handcuffs.  Clearly, the archangel didn’t see his hypothetical demonic powers as a threat. So Lucifer would touch down, taking Sam. Then, knowing the Morningstar’s flare for the dramatic, he'd shatter the stained glass windows inward, temporarily blinding or injuring everyone in the room except for himself, while smothering the flames with grains of pulverized glass.  After that the real fight would begin, and the whole world would be caught in the crossfire.

Despite the hopelessness of Michael’s plan, Sam didn’t want to point out its flaws.  The only thing that would get him was to be gifted to Lucifer that much sooner. He had to try to buy time and figure out a way out of their circumstances.  The vial of blood for the divine banishment spell was still intact. They just needed to get Ruby the vial and give her the ability to prepare the sigil without interruption.  That meant keeping Michael’s attention focused on him, which ideally meant talking.

“You seem pretty comfortable with bloodshed,” Sam told the archangel.  “I saw your handiwork in Madrid. Those killing fields weren’t ours. Our troops hadn’t touched that city, and it was too neat for the Croats.  You were killing humans, civilians.” He shook his head in disappointment and disgust at the memory, one of many sharing the common theme. “You didn’t need to be killing humans.  Your fight was with us—with Lucifer.”

“You know nothing about my mission,” Michael nearly hissed.

Sam noticed Castiel intently staring at the vial.  The glass cylinder shook slightly, but hardly moved at all.  The waning angel was trying to use his feeble telekinesis on the vial in order to roll it toward her.

“Enlighten me.”  Sam hoped that Michael would talk at length.

Sam didn’t dare look down at his hands, but he was profoundly aware that they were unbound by anti-magic manacles.  He hadn’t intentionally used his telekinesis before, but Lucifer had. Somewhere in his mind there was the secret to controlling that power.  He tried searching for the memories of what it felt like. It really was a feeling, some inarticulable sensation, acting upon the physical world without his body.  He focused on the vial, following whatever intuition he could to move it closer to Ruby. The vial slowly started rolling across the stone floor.

The archangel narrowed his eyes at Sam, debating how to respond to the invitation.  He had to be considering the fact that anything he told Sam would eventually become known to Lucifer upon possession.  He wasn’t sure if that would be sufficient reason for Michael to remain silent, or if he would feel so confident in his position that he’d happily spill his guts like the villain in the last twenty minutes of a Bond film.

He chose the middle ground.  “I am the Commander of the Armies of Heaven.  Where there exist threats to my home, I will eliminate them.”

“And human civilians are threats to Heaven?”

Differences aside, Sam knew Dean well enough to practically hear him screaming in agony as Michael drew upon those memories and the knowledge of what atrocities the Heavenly Host had committed.  His brother was likely being bombarded with years’ worth of horrors as witnessed on high from the being who had authorized every murder without hesitation.

“There are no civilians,” Michael replied coolly.  “Whatever simple naivety may have protected them in the past, there has been no denying the Apocalypse.  Ever since you started this, the line was drawn. You’re either a servant to the will of God or you are the enemy.”

As the archangel spoke, Sam continued helping Castiel slowly inch the vial closer to Ruby.  He felt like he must’ve been trembling from the effort, but thankfully it seemed to be mistaken for shivering from the cold.  Michael’s smug smile was the expression of someone who’d thought they had already won.

Sam baited him through the strain.  “And you know the will of God?”

Michael tensed, making the knuckles in his right hand crack.  It wasn’t clear if that was a silent threat, or if Sam had gone too far with that question, or whether the tension was a tell.  As of when Sam had been possessed by Lucifer, it was largely understood by all angels that God had not taken clear, definitive action in the war.  There was plenty of boasting on both sides that any given victory was indicative of God’s support of Heaven or God’s abandonment of Heaven, yet everything was too ambiguous to really carry any weight.  Maybe Michael would attempt to spin the acquisition of his vessel as a sign, but he had to know that Sam wouldn’t buy that line for a second. One archangel to an archvessel, they both knew that God had nothing to do with such a coercive ‘yes.’

“Through God’s will we possess Heaven and the Garden.  We are the keepers of perfection.” Michael took a more rationalist approach.  “God continues to entrust us with perfection, his most precious creation, because he supports us.”

Sam had to stop himself from visibly reacting to his stroke of good luck.  There was so much to unpack in that misguided statement. “You think the Garden is perfect?”

“It is,” Michael replied, certain that such a clear point needed no explanation.

“But your God would let it die.”

“The Garden isn’t dying.  It’s strength grows with the acquisition of this vessel.”

“Then why did he let it falter to begin with?” Sam countered.

“It was a test of faith.”

“The Garden and your siblings thrive on faith.  You are creatures of faith. Has anyone abandoned your side during the waning?”  Sam waited a beat, then continued. “Have you gained anything from this test? Your family has only been hurt.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed.  “You may have been my brother’s shadow, but you know nothing about my family.”

“You think just because you’re as old as time that you’re above family drama?”  Sam let out a dry laugh. “You love your brother and he betrayed you. He turned his back on his family.  I understand that—“

“You presume to think that your relationship with my vessel is the same as between me and my brother?”

“No.  I know it isn’t.”  Sam locked eyes with Michael, speaking to both the angel and the vessel.  “Because I’m ready to reconcile. I can put the past behind me and I think Dean wants to too.  He tried to save me and my family when he didn’t need to. Meanwhile you and Lucifer would rather destroy your family and the Earth because you’re too stubborn to even talk to each other—for what?  Paradise? Your family is dying and the world is falling apart—”

“This world is already in ruin and both our families have suffered,” Michael acknowledged.  “But we can stop the pain together. Let it end and your family can live eternal in paradise.  You don’t have to keep fighting for this pathetic existence— Are you not stubborn? You could relent and your family could have perfection.”

“In paradise?”

“Yes.”

He could feel the strain from using his telekinesis building up the pressure inside his head.  At any moment his nose would start to bleed—a known side effect of him using his powers. Instead of stopping, he reached up and touched his head while faking a grimace of pain.  Several drops of blood fell from his nostrils. He touched his nose and upper lip, intentionally wiping it around. Ruby was only a few inches from grabbing and opening a vial of blood; he wanted to already have the scent in the air.

Michael took another step closer to Sam, seemingly enticed by the fake vision.  “What did you see?”

He didn’t risk lying.  There was too much of a chance that Dean would be able to see through him.  Instead he evaded. “Would you believe me if I told you?”

Michael studied him for several seconds.  “I suppose not.” He subtly waved his hand, dismissing the matter, then restated his offer.  “Will you agree to say yes if your family is guaranteed a place in paradise?”

Sam sat there considering the offer.  As much as he wanted his family to have peace, he knew that the paradise Michael envisioned was not the beautiful existence promised.  It would mean their deaths and, as a demon, possibly Ruby’s destruction. His daughters would be bound in Heaven, a serene prison, where they might very well be taken advantage of for their power should things not go to plan in the Apocalypse.  If, by some miracle, there was a way for Ruby and him to be with their kids, he suspected that their minds would be tampered with; there was no place in paradise for such rebellious spirits.

There was no place in paradise for the imperfections.  No place for the unique flaws that made people interesting to paint.  The bittersweet moments of bonding over shared pain. The unimportant things that made all the difference.  He looked up at the archangel and, with complete sincerity, asked: “How many walnut trees are there?”

Michael’s brow subtly furrowed at the seemingly random question. “What?”

“How many walnut trees are there in paradise?”

The archangel actually blinked a few times in confusion.  Rationally, it was a question with no answer. Heaven, the Garden, paradise—those places of purity existed on a level that transcended the material plane.  Something as mundane and insignificant as even the pure form of a walnut tree would hardly even have a place in paradise. Of course, Sam knew this as well as any human was capable of knowing that sort of thing.  He knew that an archangel who had never stepped foot on the soil of Earth until a couple days earlier wouldn’t understand the importance of something so minor.

“Paradise is profound,” Michael replied.  “There wouldn’t be a need for—“

“How many walnut trees?” Sam asked firmly.  “A number.”

In the background, Sam could see Ruby finally manage to grab the container of blood, which she then began using to draw on the floor behind her thighs.  He could feel his heart pounding. If he couldn’t keep Michael sufficiently distracted, they would be found out and lose their single shot at getting out of that mess.  He sat up more, trying to exude an intensity that might better hold his foe’s attention.

“There could be an infinite number of trees, or none at all,” Michael answered him, thoroughly befuddled by the question.  “It’s unimportant—“

“The walnut tree is very important,” Sam posited.  When he saw Michael shift his weight, possibly to turn around, he hastily tried to antagonize him again.  “I don’t think you know anything about paradise.”

“And you do?”  Michael planted his feet, clearly offended.  “Some pathetic mortal, a vessel no less— You of all the humans should know the truth I speak.  You remember the Garden. You know of the divine.”

“I remember the divine.  I remember the rigidity, the monotony, and the sterility.”  He was filled with genuine loathing at the thought of being caught in such an oppressive state again.  “You can keep paradise. All I want is a farm for my family with a library, a walnut tree, and some chickens—and I’m pretty sure that exists somewhere on Earth.”  Without even thinking about it, he was raising his voice. “This world isn’t perfect, but there’s still good here. There’s still hope and the ability to grow. There’s still forgiveness and the chance of redemption.  That’s God’s most precious creation. And I’m not gonna let you destroy it.”

“How dare you—“

“How dare I?  ‘There are no civilians.’  You drew the line in the sand.  You think you’re the most powerful thing on this whole fucking world.  Well, you’re wrong. You and your brother are weak.” Sam didn’t stop talking while Michael approached him.  “I know your brother and he’s a coward. He’s ready to destroy the three planes throwing a fucking temper tantrum over hurt feelings.  And you know what? You’re just like him. Both of you are too cowardly to find a peaceful resolution because you might have to admit you were wrong, that you’ve made mistakes.”  Michael grabbed Sam’s throat, wordlessly threatening to strangle him or snap his neck, but Sam continued, “There’s your test of faith, and you’ve failed it.”

Michael expression was pure seething anger.  He was nearly trembling from rage. His chest was almost heaving as he struggled to find a response.  As the moment stretched, the telling silence from the archangel was deafening. Rather than trying to debate the merits of Sam’s argument, he narrowed his eyes and demanded, “Say yes to my brother.”

“No,” Sam told him defiantly.  “I’m not going to take him back.”  His voice faltered as he said, “I’m not going to let him touch my family—or kill my brother.  My answer—my choice—is no.”

Michael started squeezing his throat as he hissed, “When I—”

Finally, Ruby slapped her hand on the bloody sigil, creating a blast of white light.  For a second, Sam couldn’t see or hear anything. Then the room came back into focus. Dean was unconscious on the ground in front of him.  Castiel had a few drops of blood trickling from his nostrils and tear ducts, but he appeared to be otherwise unharmed by the banishment spell.

Sam ran over to Dean’s body and started searching it for a key to Ruby and Castiel’s handcuffs, but he couldn’t find one.  He hurried over to Ruby’s binding to see what it involved. It was a handcuff warded to dampen supernatural strength and prevent teleportation.  They may have been utilizing Enochian warding, but they had originally been standard human handcuffs prior to the modification—something he had experience with.  He quickly ran to the pile of their supplies and pulled from his jacket pocket the foil-lined gum wrapper that Castiel had given him the night before. He carefully folded up the piece of tinfoil into a thin strip.

“Can either of you break the other’s chain?” Sam asked, knowing that he could easily damage the shim he had just created while using it, thereby only freeing one of them.

“I’m not that strong anymore,” replied Castiel.

Ruby looked across the room at Castiel’s bindings, then said, “I think I can do that.”  She pursed her lips. “I can try.”

“You should be the ones to escape regardless,” the angel told them in his usual self-deprecating manner.

Sam hurried over to Ruby, then slid the flimsy, metal shim into her handcuff.  After a little finessing the clasp swung open. He pulled out the crumpled strip of tinfoil and started trying to repair it, though he didn’t have high hopes.

Ruby went to examine Castiel’s handcuff more closely, while muttering, “Yeah, well, I don’t want to go back to your trigger-happy grunts minus the one guy that had our back.”  She ran over to Dean, then asked them, “Where do you guys keep your blade?”

“Right sleeve,“ Castiel replied at the same time as Sam said,  “Left inner coat pocket.“

Ruby patted Dean down and found Michael’s blade in his right inner jacket pocket.  She grabbed the blade, then went back to Castiel’s bindings. For a moment, Sam thought that she was going to simply cut the angel’s thumb off, freeing his hand up to slide out of the handcuff, but instead she wedged the blade’s tip into a weak point in the chain where it met the stone wall and pried.  The link bent, opening wide enough for the six-foot-long chain to be unhooked and taken with them.

Despite knowing that they only had at least a thirty minute head start, Ruby took a moment before they lifted Dean up to carry him out.  She picked up his head, cradling the back of his skull in her offhand, then punched him in the face. Sam noted that her offhand had thoughtfully protected his head from hitting the stone and potentially causing significant damage.  Honestly, he couldn’t blame her for indulging in that brief moment of repercussion-less catharsis.

The three of them barely threw on clothes and shoes, then Sam and Ruby grabbed Dean while Castiel grabbed their supplies, and they fled the church.  As they exited the building, they could see the town down the hill below them. Rather than head back that way, they cut straight through the woods towards their SUV.  Sam didn’t even bother suggesting that there might be survivors in the town. They all knew that wasn’t true and there wasn’t time to search the town even if it was.

Ruby drove like a literal woman possessed, only using the brakes at an absolute minimum to prevent them spinning off the road.  Throughout the drive Sam and Castiel monitored Dean’s pulse while also watching their surrounding for signs that Heaven might’ve caught up.  When they got back to where the camp had been, another rebel SUV full of medical supplies and a driver was waiting for them. They moved Dean and piled into the new car.

Sam let Castiel focus on taking care of Dean in the back of the car.  Now that they finally had a moment to breathe, he grabbed Ruby and held her tight.  She buried her face in his chest. He ran his fingers through her hair while whispering reassurances and promises.  Wrapped in Ruby’s comforting embrace, exhaustion overtook him and he fell asleep.

 

_Sam was standing in the middle of a road that ran through the snowy forest.  About twenty feet in front of him, Lucifer stood._

_“What have you done?” the archangel asked.  His voice wasn’t concerned, but there was a faint confusion to it._

_Sam was struck by the fact that Lucifer hadn’t opened with his usual demand for Sam to return.  He wasn’t sure if the angels could already feel the effect that Michael losing his vessel would have on the Garden.  It was possible that Lucifer was simply at a loss for how he’d recovered from the brink of starvation so quickly. There were plenty of things happening outside the archangel’s purview.  Hopefully that blindness scared him._

_“I met your brother, Michael.  He is arrogant.”_

_“I won’t disagree with that,” Lucifer replied coolly._

_“It must run in your family,” Sam commented._

_Lucifer’s brow furrowed at his oddly calm behavior, considering who Sam had just interacted with.  “If you’ve met Michael, are you finally ready to allow me back in? If he’s in his vessel, then it’s only a matter of time before the children—”_

_“Remember your experiments?”  Sam interjected, confusing Lucifer all the more.  “How you’d make us do…. You’d do horrible things, then watch me scream and squirm, helpless to do anything.  You’d study me— Well, let’s have another experiment.” Sam tried to keep his composure, which was difficult between the painful memories and his eagerness to deliver the venomous news.  “Your second wind isn’t coming. You aren’t about to get restored by the power of faith and the Garden. Michael lost Dean.”_

_The wicked glint in Lucifer’s eyes dulled slightly.  His lips thinned as he processed the revelation. While in theory it was better for him to not have the Commander of the Heavenly Host in play, the news of another setback to either side would be devastating.  There was no doubt that word was spreading through Heaven at that very moment, further poisoning the Garden and all the angels tied to it. Lucifer’s skin almost seemed to lose a little color at the realization of what had just happened._

_“You don’t look so well,” Sam commented dryly.  “Fascinating.”_

_“Come back.”  It wasn’t even a threat.  For the first time in his life, Sam could hear desperation in Lucifer’s voice._

_In a completely calm, unwavering tone he answered, “No.”_

_They both silently watched each other, standing on the lone road.  The moment reminded Sam of high noon in one of those old westerns that Dean used to watch.  He and Lucifer were both waiting for the other to make some move, but the dynamic truly had changed.  Sam wasn’t bracing himself for whatever terrifying threat or enraging statement he might make. The archangel’s words had lost their edge.  In that moment, Sam realized that he didn’t fear him anymore._

_“There will come a time when you’ll need my help,” Lucifer told him._

_Sam didn’t even bother denying the claim.  He was beyond the old bickering. He was done with it.  “Between us, you don’t have the power—not anymore, and never again.”_

_Lucifer’s image dimmed slightly, then flickered.  “Sam—“_

_The archangel was gone.  For a moment he thought it might be some sort of trick, but standing there, he could feel the stillness.  The once-great archangel had lost enough of his power that his grasp on Sam had faltered to the point that he couldn’t invade his dreams.  Sam’s legs wobbled, he knelt down on the cold asphalt, and he began crying with joy. He was finally free of Lucifer._


	24. Late Winter: Epilogue

Sam placed another log into the iron wood-burning stove.  Initially, Ruby had complained about the appliance being incompatible with demons, but by the end of the first day in their one-room cabin she’d embraced the perk of never having to tend the fire.  He picked up a paperback copy of  _ The Hobbit _ from their single bookshelf—the first of many to come.  So far they’d only managed to find eighteen books, and several of the rebels had criticized his priorities when it came to scavenging, but he knew the long game for beating Lucifer and Heaven.  He lay down on the queen-sized bed where Ruby was nursing their two daughters, then began reading the book aloud to their children.

It had taken nearly three weeks for them and the group of rebels to locate another abandoned settlement that was isolated enough for them to begin rebuilding their camp.  The place had been some sleepy little town full of winter vacation cottages conveniently located near some skiing slope that no one knew the name of. Eventually, the plan was to travel west to the more temperate California, but that would wait a couple months until it was warm enough for them to cross the Rocky Mountains.

With the loss of their second archvessel, the Garden had suffered another blow.  It had hardly taken an hour before Castiel had started feeling his remaining angelic powers dwindle to nearly nothing.  He’d been left little more than a human, with the occasional fleeting echoes of something more. As far as Sam could tell from his visions, many of the lesser choirs of angels were barely any stronger than demons.  In fact, the harm inflicted to the Garden and all of the angels was probably why it had taken several days for Heaven to regroup and begin their pursuit of the rebels.

Following his rescue, Dean had been unconscious for just under five days and essentially bedridden for another week.  Castiel and Sam had speculated that the transition had actually been harder on Dean because, unlike Sam, his body hadn’t yet developed angelic fortitude.  The strain of taking in an archangel only to have it be ripped out a couple days later had been more than enough to lay him out.

While Dean was recovering, Castiel continued to lead.  Sam had helped by providing as much intel from his visions as possible.  And Ruby had reinforced the caravan’s protective magic and worked with Nells to make sure their new camp was thoroughly warded.

Sam and Ruby’s cabin was located on the edge of the camp, giving them some space while not leaving them completely isolated.  He preferred that, as did Ruby and the few dozen rebels under Dean’s command. For the moment it was probably better to keep a little distance.  Despite their efforts to help defend the camp, they were regarded with the same wariness that one might give the fortuneteller or witch in some fairy tale—though he supposed he was, indeed, the fortuneteller, and Ruby was the witch.

It was a blissfully quiet day.  He wasn’t on rotation to join the hunting party, which meant that he could spend his time more or less as he saw fit.  After collecting two bowls of something that resembled a hybrid between porridge and a meaty stew for lunch, he had retreated back to the peace of their cabin to enjoy the meal with Ruby.  The food didn’t taste bad, but the best part was that neither of them had actually had to work for that meal.

Sam was lying in bed playing with the small, curly locks forming in Emma’s hair while reading aloud when there was a knock on the door.  He gave both of his daughters a gentle kiss on their heads, then got up to see who it was. Before opening the door, he picked up his angel blade.  He didn’t really expect an attacker to bother knocking, but the weapon helped with some of his lingering anxiety when it came to other people and surprises.

Opening the door, he saw that it was Dean.  The elder Winchester was still somewhat pale, but at least he seemed to be stable.  It was their first time directly interacting since the rescue. Prior to that moment, there had always been a few soldiers lingering about, and neither brother had the courage to ask for a moment one-on-one.

Dean’s eyes settled on the blade that Sam was holding.  “That’s a bit overkill. These days a normal knife’ll do the job.”

“Habit,” Sam replied, then put it down.

“We’re having a tactical meeting in ten minutes.  We could use your help with nailing down the plan of attack.”

Sam was a little surprised by the invitation to actually attend a meeting.  Usually, he just relayed the contents of his visions through Castiel or Nells and tried to stay out of the way.  The thought that he was being let into their group when it wasn’t an absolute crisis made him feel a bit hopeful.  Maybe, eventually, the rebels would grow less wary of his odd little family.

“What’s the mission?”

“We’re gonna restart the offensive.  Specifically, hunting down some of Lucifer’s lieutenants.  I thought you might have something to say.” When Sam picked up his jacket, Dean leaned over slightly to look past him at Ruby.  “I thought both of you might have something to say.”

From her spot on the bed, Ruby raised an eyebrow at him.  “Did your heart grow three sizes that day?”

Dean chewed his cheek in mild annoyance at the jab, but he didn’t argue or insult her.  Instead he shifted uncomfortably while swallowing some of his pride. “You didn’t turn on Jo.  Maybe you were protecting your kids, but….” He tilted his head from side to side. “You didn’t fuck us.”

She swung at the low-hanging fruit.  “I mostly fuck your brother.”

Dean’s lips thinned as he immediately turned so that he wasn’t looking at either of them in an attempt to mitigate any disturbing mental images.  Before leaving, he told them: “Fifteen minutes. If you’re coming, don’t be late. We’ve got work to do.”


End file.
